Craig Williams: In stark contrast to what was done by the last Government, what this Government are doing for the Great Western line—the electrification, and the new trains—is remarkable. Will the Minister meet me to discuss the provision of direct trains from Cardiff Central station to London to build on that capacity and investment?

Political Consequences of the EU Referendum

Alun Cairns: The British people have voted to leave the European Union, and my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has made clear that their will must be respected and delivered. We are now preparing for a negotiated exit from the EU, which will involve close engagement with all the devolved Administrations to ensure that the interests of all parts of the United Kingdom are protected and advanced.

Hywel Williams: I did ask about the Secretary of State’s Department. Anyway, I am concerned about the loss of common agricultural policy and convergence funding, and of research moneys to universities, and about the lost opportunities to young people to live, work and study abroad. But also, being Welsh and European, I feel the closing of our horizons towards a parochial little Britainism. What more can he do to ensure the future of our Welsh cultural London bypass to the rest of our continent?

Gerald Jones: Thank you, Mr Speaker. With EU funds, the road has been mostly turned into a dual carriageway, but some phases of the work are yet to start. Will the Secretary of State assure me that he will do all that he can and work with the Welsh Government to provide support and ensure that that project and many like it will not be jeopardised by Brexit?

Alun Cairns: The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. I underline that we remain full, active members of the EU, with all the benefits and obligations that that brings, for at least two years. The project he highlights is one of the more successful EU-funded projects, but not all of them were as successful and had questionable strategies and woolly outcomes. We need to reassess how we support regional aid programmes.

John Bercow: The voice of Montgomeryshire must be heard.

David Cameron: If we are going to talk about the economic record, let us get the facts straight. We have cut the deficit by two thirds. There are 2.5 million more people in work in our country. There are almost a million more businesses and 2.9 million people in apprenticeships have been trained under this Government. When it comes to poverty, 300,000 fewer people are in relative poverty and 100,000 fewer children are in relative poverty. If I am accused of sloth in delivery by the right hon. Gentleman, let us take the past week. We have both been having leadership elections. We got on with it. We have had resignation, nomination, competition and coronation. The Opposition have not even decided what the rules are yet. If they ever got into power, it would take them about a year to work out who would sit where.

David Cameron: First of all, specifically on the Brain family, Mrs Brain came to this country on a tier 4 student visa to study for a Scottish history degree. She completed it and her husband and son came as dependents. We have given them an extension until 1 August to put in an application for a work visa in the normal way, and I very much hope that will happen.
On Trident, there will be a vote in this House. It is right that this House should decide. Actually, many people in Scotland support our nuclear deterrent, maintaining it and the jobs that come in Scotland.
The right hon. Gentleman asks about the record of this Government when it comes to Scotland. I will tell him what it is: 143,000 more people in work in Scotland; massive investment in the renewable industries in Scotland; the two biggest warships in our history built in Scotland; a powerhouse Parliament; a referendum that was legal, decisive and fair; and, I might add, a Scotsman winning Wimbledon twice while I was Prime Minister. Never mind Indy 2; I think it is time for Andy 2.

David Cameron: On the economic record, 2.5 million more jobs, the deficit cut by two thirds, 2.9 million apprenticeships, a million more businesses, and a growth rate that has been at the top of the developed world are all because of the choices that we made. Because we did that, we have been able to back our NHS with a 10% funding increase, which is more than £10 billion in real terms in this Parliament. As for Europe, we have to settle these issues. It is right that, when trying to settle a really big constitutional issue, that you not just rely on Parliament, but ask the people as well. We made a promise and we kept a promise.

Margaret Greenwood: I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a bill to re-establish the Secretary of State’s legal duty as to the National Health Service in England and to make provision about the other duties of the Secretary of State in that regard; to make provision about the administration and accountability of the National Health Service in England; to repeal section 1 of the National Health Service (Private Finance) Act 1997, sections 38 and 39 of the Immigration Act 2014 and Part 9 of the Health and Social Care Information Act 2012; to make provision about the application of international law in relation to health services in the United Kingdom; and for connected purposes.
It is a privilege to have the opportunity to present this Bill to the House. I pay tribute to the many patients, nurses, doctors, trade unions and campaigners across the country who have been working tirelessly to combat the privatisation of our national health service. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) and the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) for the work that they have done.
The Bill is intended to fully restore the NHS as an accountable public service by reversing marketisation in the NHS, abolishing the purchaser-provider split, ending contracting, re-establishing public bodies and making public services accountable to local communities. The Health and Social Care Act 2012 provided the framework for the privatisation of the NHS, and we are seeing that privatisation happen at pace. I believe that the Act brought in three core changes that are driving that privatisation. First, it removed the legal duty on the Secretary of State for Health to provide and secure a comprehensive national health service in England. Secondly, it included a requirement to put NHS contracts out to competitive tender in the free market, putting the profit motive at the heart of the service. Thirdly, it allowed NHS hospitals to make up to 49% of their money out of private patients.
The Bill makes the case for a planned, managed health service. It would reinstate the duty of the Health Secretary, lost under the 2012 Act, to provide a secure and comprehensive NHS. That is important because, under the current arrangements, clinical commissioning groups do not have to serve a particular geographic area and are not required to tend to all illnesses and conditions. In some areas, certain treatments, such as hip and knee replacements and cataract operations, are already being rationed. Reinstating the Secretary of State’s duty is vital to provide the Government accountability needed to maintain a comprehensive NHS.
The 2012 Act forces NHS contracts out to competitive tender in the marketplace, allowing private companies to cherry-pick NHS services from which they can make money. Since 2012, we have seen the effect of NHS contracts going to private companies—it undermines NHS services and the pay and conditions of staff and fragments the service. The sums of money involved  are eye-watering. The Government would have us believe that only 6% of contracts go to private firms, but according to the NHS Support Federation, private firms won 36.8% of contracts in 2014-15, securing £3.54 billion of the £9.628 billion of deals awarded.
Does that matter? I say yes, absolutely, without question. Contracting out is very expensive. In the USA, the cost accounts for about 30% of healthcare expenditure, compared with 5% in the non-marketised NHS pre-1990. Any private company has a duty to generate profit for shareholders, but the money we pay through our taxes should be spent on patient care and should not go to shareholders. Putting healthcare contracts out to competitive tender means money being spent on marketing and contract lawyers that could be spent on patients. A proliferation of providers also means a proliferation of administrative costs and opens up opportunities for fraud.
The only way the private sector can reduce costs is ultimately by cutting quality, which might happen by a number of means—for example, by cutting the pay and terms and conditions of health service staff or by selling off nationally owned assets. As a nation, we hold our doctors, nurses and other NHS staff in high esteem, and it is important that we protect their pay and conditions. The Bill therefore includes a requirement for the use of national terms and conditions of employment for relevant NHS staff under the NHS Staff Council and its “Agenda for Change” system. It also includes provisions aimed at preventing the application of competition law and procurement rules to the NHS. It would abolish Monitor, the sector regulator that licenses health service providers and oversees the operation of procurement, choice and competition rules in the health service, and it would repeal sections of the 2012 Act relating to procurement, competition, tariff pricing and health special administration.
Under the 2012 Act, NHS hospitals can make up to 49% of their money from private patients. How they make it is up to them, but the startling fact is that they can do it. They can choose to devote 49% of patient beds to private patients, 49% of theatre time to private patients or 49% of consultants’ time to private patients—and absolutely nobody voted for it. It was in neither the Conservative party’s nor the Liberal Democrats’ manifesto, yet they went ahead and passed legislation to make it happen. That is nothing short of a national scandal. I ask hon. Members to reflect on what it would mean for their constituents if their hospital made such choices. How soon could that happen? In some places, it is happening already. The Royal Marsden hospital now makes 26%—over a quarter—of its money from private patients.
I turn to the NHS financial crisis, which we are all aware of, which is particularly notable in our hospitals and which is accelerating at a frightening pace. NHS trusts in England have recorded a deficit of £2.45 billion for 2015-16—the biggest overspend in the history of the NHS, nearly three times that of the preceding year and more than 20 times the 2013-14 deficit. Three in four hospitals predict that they will be in deficit this year, and the financial crisis is also have an impact on the delivery of care. In those circumstances, it is not difficult to see how hospital managers might feel that increasing the number of private patients they treat in order to generate more income is one of the few options open  to them.
We can also look at the recent arrival of sustainability transformation plans to see the bigger picture. England has been divided into 44 areas, each of which is required to come up with an STP. The first priority for the STP is that CCGs and providers must cut expenditure, stay  within budget for 2016-17 and continue to do so for the next four years in order to be entitled to access centrally controlled transformation funding. They will face tough choices—they could sell assets, cut services, ration services or actually charge for services. In that landscape, we can expect to see hospitals taking private patients to generate extra cash, putting NHS patients at the back of the queue.
Doubtless the Government would argue that hospitals will be able to reinvest the money earned from private patients, but that argument does not stack up. If we cut 49% of resources from NHS patients, waiting times will grow and the quality of service will decline. We will see the emergence of a two-tier health service: first-rate for those with the money to pay, but NHS patients receiving a much diminished service. The concept of a comprehensive service free at the point of use will be lost within a generation, and we will all face the real possibility of having to buy health insurance, just as people do in America.
Let us remind ourselves that these hospitals are ours. They have been paid for out of our taxes and are run by our NHS staff—they are not the Government’s to give away. This Bill addresses that and would remove the right of NHS hospitals to make 49% of their money out of private patients.
We will not be able to manage our NHS properly until we address the issue of social care. We are all aware of how important that is. Why should we settle for an NHS that is free to all who need it unless they are elderly or have complex needs? The Bill provides an opportunity to change that. It would give the Secretary of State a duty to exercise his functions with a view to integrating the provision of health and social care services. That integration was a key aim of my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) when he was shadow Secretary of State for Health in the last Parliament and formed part of the Labour party manifesto. I believe that families up and down the country would welcome that development.
The Bill would also provide for the transfer of financial obligations on NHS private finance initiative agreements to the Treasury, which would also be required to assess and publish those obligations. That would improve public health, stop the privatisation of the NHS and return it to its founding principles. It would remove competition and the profit motive as the drivers of policy and replace them with the public service ethos that has been the hallmark of the NHS since its foundation. The NHS is currently on life support, and the public, patients and NHS staff know it. The Bill provides a viable alternative. The NHS was 68 years old last week; we need to make sure it is there for all who need it for the next 68 years, too.

Philip Davies: Thank you, Mr Speaker; I appreciate that.
I was making the point that when the Labour party gave out contracts to the private sector, it actually paid the private providers a higher tariff for carrying out that work than they paid to NHS hospitals and providers.  To my mind, that was a complete outrage. If Labour was so much against the private sector, why on earth was it paying private providers a higher tariff than NHS providers? It was the current Government who stopped that absurd practice and made sure that private providers were paid the same tariff as NHS providers. The hon. Member for Wirral West could have mentioned that in her remarks, but she failed to do so.
As I said, the whole Bill is based on a false premise, because it was the last Labour Government who introduced the private sector into the NHS and paid private providers more for carrying out the same work, and the current Government have dealt with that absurdity.
The hon. Lady was pretty quiet about the part of the Bill that deals with section 38 of the Immigration Act 2014, which she wishes to repeal. That section requires nationals from outside the European economic area who come to the UK for longer than six months to pay a health surcharge when making their immigration application. Although no statistics are yet available on the amount of revenue raised from that surcharge, an answer to a parliamentary question last year showed that the Government estimated that they would recover about £200 million a year from foreign nationals using the NHS. The hon. Lady wishes to repeal that legislation. In effect, she wants foreign nationals to come to the UK and use the NHS free of charge. No wonder she mentioned so little of that. At the end of her speech she talked about the financial crisis that the NHS is suffering, yet she is bringing forward a Bill that will stop the NHS being able to recover some of the money spent on treating foreign nationals. The whole Bill is a complete absurdity and nonsense.
If the hon. Lady is proud of that provision in the Bill, why did she not mention it during her speech? Perhaps she is secretly embarrassed about it. Perhaps she knows that her constituents would not particularly appreciate her attempt to introduce legislation to give foreign nationals free treatment, which would cost the NHS more money rather than saving it money. I know that she is one of the last remaining supporters of the Leader of the Opposition, but even he might think that that was rather a strange way of trying to improve the NHS’s financial position.
I know that this is the same Bill that the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) presented during the last Session. Perhaps the hon. Member for Wirral West did not actually read the Bill. Perhaps she presented it without having looked at it, and did not realise that it included that particular provision. Either there has  been an omission on her part, or we have the rather strange absurdity that she wants to introduce legislation to take at least £200 million a year away from the NHS. She might be able to discuss how that would help the NHS, but I do not see the logic in it.
I do not intend to prevent the hon. Lady from having her moment in the sun. I merely wished to point out that the whole Bill is based on a false premise. It was the last Labour Government who introduced the private sector into the NHS, not the current Government. No matter how many times the hon. Lady repeats that particular myth, it will not get off the ground. Her Bill would cost the NHS more rather than saving it any money, and on that basis, when it comes before the House, I shall be here.
Question put (Standing Order No. 23) and agreed to.
Ordered,
That Margaret Greenwood, Caroline Lucas, Dawn Butler, Stella Creasy, Nic Dakin, Peter Dowd, Mike Kane, Liz McInnes, Yasmin Qureshi, Marie Rimmer, Stephen Twigg and John Pugh present the Bill.
Margaret Greenwood accordingly presented the Bill.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on 4 November 2016 and to be printed (Bill 51).

Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority

Andy Burnham: I would customarily start a speech such as this by saying something like, “Where is the Home Secretary?” but even I will admit that the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) has better things to do today. I want to take this opportunity on the behalf of the Opposition Benches to pay tribute to her tenure as Home Secretary. I have found that she has certainly been prepared to listen, particularly in the case of Hillsborough, on which her work was outstanding for the families who had faced a terrible injustice for all those years. I hope that she will continue to listen, and I have every hope that she will go on to make a good Prime Minister.
I also pay tribute to the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes), the Minister of State—for now. With the fast impending reshuffle, he will be twitchy on the Front Bench, but I suspect that his obvious talents will be rightly rewarded.
The order before the House today arises from the Terrorism Act 2000, which was passed by the previous Labour Government and was intended to provide a flexible framework to deal with the changing and emerging threat of new forms of terrorism. It is fair to say that we have seen unimaginable events in the 16 years since that legislation was originally enacted. Specifically, we have seen the rise of terrorism based on a distortion of Islam and its values. It is important to describe it as such rather than use the shorthand “Islamic terrorism”, because that is inaccurate and makes life harder for those in the Muslim community who face a daily and monumental battle against this perversion of their faith. Let us be careful in our language and help those battling radicalisation, not those who foment it.
The BBC has taken to using the phrase “so-called Islamic State”. In my view, that is not helpful. The use of “so-called” does not undermine “Islamic” or “State” and those are the two words that the public hear. It gives undeserved status to the organisation and makes it sound as though it is an authorised branch of Islam. I urge the director-general of the BBC to review that editorial decision and to move, as the Government have, to the use of Daesh. That is important, as I said at the beginning, because we face a highly changeable and challenging terrorism landscape.
Figures from the “Global Peace Index 2016” report show that deaths from terrorism increased by 80% in the past year. Only 69 countries did not record a terrorist incident. The intensity of terrorist activity is also increasing. Last year, 11 countries reported 500 or more deaths from terrorist incidents—double on the year before—and incidents are happening all the time. Last month, a police officer was killed in France, for which Daesh claimed responsibility, and 44 people were killed and 239 injured by a bomb at Istanbul airport, for which it is suspected that Daesh was again responsible. Those are big increases on a rising trend. The year 2014 saw some 13,500 terrorist attacks around the world and 32,700 deaths. This is the context in which we are considering today’s order. As the terrorism landscape changes, the Government are right to be vigilant and to try to keep one step ahead.
We are being asked today to give agreement to the Government to proscribe four organisations linked to terrorism. Two have links to al-Qaeda and the others  have links with Daesh. The public and political debate is obviously focused on the activities of Daesh in Syria and the wider middle east. It would however be a mistake for this House to lose sight of what is happening in Asia, particularly south-east Asia, as the Minister rightly said. It would be a further mistake for the House to focus on Daesh and to lose focus on al-Qaeda and its efforts to regroup. That is why the Government are right to bring this order for consideration today and to disrupt the activities of the relevant organisations before they establish a stronger foothold. The evidence that the Home Office put before the House makes it clear that there are grounds to proscribe the organisations.
We accept that evidence and will support the order this afternoon, but I want to make one point before I close that I ask the Minister and the Government to take into account. I want to go back to when the legislation was first introduced and to the first group of organisations to be proscribed under the 2000 Act, which included the International Sikh Youth Federation. There were objections at the time and what followed was a protracted legal argument in the courts, which ended only recently, and led to the Government coming to the House to lift the proscription. Learning from that experience, I say to the Minister that evidence does change over time. There may have been grounds to proscribe that organisation back then, but those grounds clearly expired some time ago. However, the people to which such orders relate may find that they stigmatise a section of their community.

Richard Arkless: You will no doubt be pleased, Mr Speaker, as will hon. Members, to hear that I intend to keep my comments brief, with a view to freeing up as much time as possible for discussion of the Iraq war inquiry.
Although issues of national security are reserved, the Scottish Government have co-operated closely with the UK Government and will continue to do so. We recognise that the security services and the police require adequate powers to fight terrorism. However, such powers should always be necessary, proportionate and in accordance with the rule of law. We have assessed the four organisations proposed to be added to the proscribed list against that benchmark. There is clear evidence that the Global Islamic Media Front propagates jihadist ideology. The MIT has a clear modus operandi of attacking the police and army, and it has made many killings, as the Minister outlined. The Turkistan Islamic party has claimed responsibility for a number of atrocities in China. The JAD was responsible for the awful mall attack we all witnessed earlier this year in Jakarta.
I wish to add the calls from Scottish National party Members to the request made by the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) to the BBC to reconsider the language it uses when dealing with terrorist organisations, and in particular, the kind of legitimacy it gives by using the phrase “so-called Islamic State”, which I consider to be appalling. These people are not Islamic and the phrase should not be used any more. The BBC should accede to calls championed by my SNP colleagues that we should use, as the Government now do, the term “Daesh”.

John Hayes: I hope my remarks will be pithy, but it would be a discourtesy to those who have contributed to the debate if I were not to deal with some of the important matters they have raised. First, let me deal with the points made by the shadow Secretary of State and thank him for his support for the work we are trying to do today. I echo his sentiments about both the dynamism and the intensity of terrorism—he is right about both—and because of that dynamism we need to keep these matters under constant review. I thank him for his remarks about my talents and hope that they have been heard right across the Treasury Bench and further afield. He is also right to draw attention to Asia,  and south-east Asia in particular. It is of course important that we focus on Syria—as I say, it is the main destination for jihadists from across the world—but we should not underestimate the worldwide spread of terrorism and indeed we do not in the Home Office. I can assure him that we take Asia and south-east Asia very seriously, which is partly why we are dealing with these matters in the way we are today.
A considerable number of comments were made by the Chairman of the Select Committee and others about the process by which we proscribe and have proscribed organisations. I will go a little further than perhaps my officials and others might have expected, and say now that I am not going to put in place a statutory period of review, contrary to the advice of David Anderson and the advocacy of the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee. However, I have listened carefully to what the shadow Minister and others have said about the speed at which the current system works. If we are not going to have a review, and I think we should not—that is my formal response on behalf of the Government, which I will put into writing—we need to ensure that the process, as it stands, is fit for purpose. That means ensuring that it is not burdensome, that it is not too lengthy and that it is not insensitive in the way it was suggested it might have been in some cases. To that end, I will look again at making sure we put in place a process that is robust and transparent, but which is not endless. That is the point the shadow Minister was making, and he is right about the effect that stigma can have. I understand that and I want to be as sensitive to it as we can be. He can reasonably say that he and the Select Committee Chairman have earned that commitment from me, given that they put their case so reasonably.
The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) raised some issues specific to Northern Ireland and some that are more general. He can be certain that the Government look at these matters very carefully and repeatedly. As I said earlier, we consider proscription with absolute care. He is right, too, that we need to look at the links between organisations, which I talked about when I introduced this order. I will follow up the question he raised about those links. I cannot speak about some of those matters on the Floor of the House, because they are highly sensitive. As he will appreciate, these intelligence issues cannot be aired on all occasions. I will, however, follow up his question. He will understand that part of it relates to something he has raised in this House before, as he is a diligent Member of this House and understandably takes an interest in these subjects. He has previously raised the role that social media and communications technology play in making some of those links real. He is right to do so. The Government take that seriously and so do a great deal of work in that area, and I am more than happy—as I have been in the past—to correspond with him on those matters.
The hon. Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin) raised the matter of Hizb ut-Tahrir—[Interruption.] Well, the pronunciation is not perfect, but then I cannot be perfect in every way. It would not be appropriate for me to speak more specifically about HUT—as it is more commonly known—in this debate. The Government have significant concerns about that organisation, and he has drawn attention to them. He will know that that  has been articulated repeatedly in exactly the way he described. We continue to monitor its activities extremely closely. Individual members are of course subject to general criminal law, and we will certainly continue to ensure that groups like it cannot operate without challenge in public places in this country, and that civic organisations are made aware of them and the names under which they operate in order to disguise their activities. The group is not proscribed in the UK at the moment, but, as I have said, these matters are regularly scrutinised and considered by Government. I think that I had better leave it at that. With those comments—

John Hayes: Not for the first time, the right hon. Gentleman has done this House a service in drawing our attention exactly to the subject that he raises. He is absolutely right that the media, and particularly the BBC, has a salient responsibility in this respect. The BBC is of course taken seriously, and as a result, the impression that is created from the words that it uses can have devastating effect. I entirely agree with him and others who have made the case in this House today and say, on behalf of the Government, that we should indeed send a message to the BBC that calling organisations “so-called” creates entirely the wrong impression. I hope that, henceforth, it will drop that description in exactly the way he said.

Philip Hammond: I beg to move,
That this House has considered the Report of the Iraq Inquiry.
I welcome the opportunity to open this first day of debate on the report of the Iraq inquiry. I suspect that, in the circumstances, the world’s eye will not be focused on our proceedings with quite the laser-like intensity that might have been expected when the debate was originally announced.
Let me start by paying tribute to the work of Sir John Chilcot and other members of the inquiry committee, including the late Sir Martin Gilbert, who sadly passed away during the writing of the report. For anyone who has read even just part of this report—I defy anyone to say that they have read the entire thing—it will be clear that the committee has discharged what is a Herculean task thoroughly, fairly, with great rigour and a degree of frankness that will reassure those who feared a whitewash and that ensures there can be no ambiguity about the lessons that need to be learned.
I also want to signal my understanding that the publication of the Chilcot report a week ago will have been a poignant and no doubt difficult moment for the families of those who lost loved ones in Iraq. It is important, even as we examine the detail of the report and conduct this debate, that they know that this House will never forget the sacrifice of the 179 British servicemen and women, as well as the 23 British civilians, who lost their lives during the conflict and its aftermath. We will also never forget the service and the sacrifice of the thousands more who suffered life-changing injuries, and we reaffirm to them today our determination that they will get the care they need for the rest of their lives. I hope that the survivors and the relatives of the fallen alike will have taken comfort from the assiduous and detailed examination of the war to be found in this report. The sacrifice of our service people demands nothing less.
More than 13 years since the invasion of Iraq begun, 10 years since the Conservative party and others first called for it, and seven years since the then Prime Minister Gordon Brown finally commissioned it, the Iraq inquiry report sets out to try to answer the crucial  questions that have dominated the debate about the war in Iraq and the events that preceded and followed it. Did the United Kingdom decide to go to war on a mistaken or false premise? Were all the decisions leading up to the war and subsequently properly taken and informed by proper consideration of legal advice? Was the operation to invade Iraq properly planned and executed? Did the Government of the day foresee and prepare adequately for the aftermath? Were our armed forces adequately funded and provided with the proper protection and equipment for their task?
Digesting fully the contents of this report will take weeks rather than days. In 13 volumes and 2.6 million words, Sir John and his committee take us in painstaking detail through the decision making in Government between 2001, when the possibility of military action first arose, and 2009, when British combat troops finally departed Iraq. They set out the conclusions that they have reached on some of the central issues that have proved so controversial, including the handling, use and presentation of secret intelligence, and they identify many lessons that should be learned and implemented for the future.

Philip Hammond: It goes without saying that Ministers—indeed, all Members—should be completely truthful in their utterances to Parliament at all times, and the ministerial code makes that clear.
Specifically on the reconstruction effort, Sir John finds that
“the UK failed to plan or prepare for the major reconstruction programme required”
and that lessons that had been learned through previous reviews of post-conflict reconstruction and stabilisation
“were not applied in Iraq”.
On the issue of de-ba’athification, Sir John finds that early decisions on the form of de-ba’athification and its implementation
“had a significant and lasting negative impact on Iraq.”
Limiting de-ba’athification to the top three tiers, rather than four, of the party would have had the potential to be far less damaging to Iraq’s post-invasion recovery and political stability. The UK chose not to act on its well-founded misgivings about handing over implementation of deba’athification policy to the governing council.
Turning to the equipping and resourcing of British troops, Sir John finds that the Government failed to match resources to the objectives. He records that by undertaking concurrent operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Government
“knowingly exceeded the Defence Planning Assumptions.”
At least in part as a consequence, Sir John concludes that the military role ended
“a long way from success.”
Furthermore, he finds that
“delays in providing adequate medium weight Protected Patrol Vehicles and the failure to meet the needs of UK forces...for ISTAR and helicopters should not have been tolerated”
and that the
“MoD was slow in responding to the developing threat from Improvised Explosive Devices.”
At the end of all this analysis, Sir John finds plainly that
“the Iraq of 2009 certainly did not meet the UK’s objectives...it fell far short of strategic success.”
These findings relate to decisions taken at that time, and the arrangements and processes in place at the time. It is, therefore, for those who were Ministers at the time to answer for their actions. This Government’s role is not to seek to apportion blame or to revisit those actions; it is to ensure that the lessons identified by Chilcot are learned, and that they have already led to changes or will lead to changes being implemented in the future.
The Government, including previous Administrations, have not stood still while waiting for the findings we have before us today. There were a number of important reviews relating to the invasion and occupation of Iraq before Chilcot, including Lord Butler’s review of intelligence on weapons of mass destruction, Lord Hutton’s inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the death of Dr David Kelly, and the inquiries of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee and the Intelligence and Security Committee of both Houses. As a result of each, lessons have been identified and changes have been implemented, so a good deal of the work has already been done.

Philip Hammond: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is one of the purposes of a more formal process of decision making. I can say from personal experience that Attorney General advice is often complex, and it is necessary to have it in advance of the meeting at which decisions will be discussed and taken so that one can absorb it and consult one’s own departmental lawyers, as a departmental Minister, to explain it, challenge it, or review it further.
The third lesson to draw from the inquiry is that a culture at the heart of Government that welcomes challenge to the conventional wisdom of “the system”, or the strongly held convictions of Ministers, is essential to avoid the sort of group-think that led to what Chilcot describes as
“the ingrained belief…that Saddam Hussein’s regime retained chemical and biological warfare capabilities”.
Inevitably, the culture at the centre of any Government is a product primarily of the climate established by the Prime Minister of the day. Ensuring that people around the NSC table feel free to speak their minds without jeopardising their careers is the greatest contribution a Prime Minister can make. I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr Cameron) for the way in which he has done that over the past six years.
Fourthly, proper planning for the aftermath of any intervention in another country is vital to successfully delivering the overall objective. The failure in London properly to plan for the conflict’s aftermath, fatally combined with the flawed assumption that the Americans must have a plan, when they did not, led inevitably to the chaos that we saw on the ground in Iraq. As we know will be the case in Syria, Libya, Yemen, and again, today, Iraq, when the current conflicts in each end, the challenge of rebuilding effective governance in conflict-torn countries is enormous. Under this Government, we have created the conflict, stability and stabilisation fund—CSSF—with £1 billion a year in it now, rising to £1.3 billion by the end of the spending review period. It builds on the success of the cross-Government stabilisation unit to ensure proper planning and preparedness for post-conflict situations and a capacity for rapid deployment of expert staff anywhere in the world.
The fifth lesson that we draw—one that I feel particularly keenly as a former Defence Secretary—is that our armed forces must always be properly equipped for the tasks we ask them to do. That is why we have instituted quinquennial strategic defence and security reviews to ensure that we commit the level of resources necessary to meet the ambition set out in the national security strategy. Since 2010, we have eliminated the £38 billion black hole we inherited in the defence procurement budget; we have continued to meet the NATO commitment to spend at least 2% of our GDP on defence; and we have set out a 10-year forward defence equipment programme, planning to invest at least £178 billion on new military equipment over the next decade. I am proud of these decisions. But we should be clear today that the decision to send our troops into a pre-planned  engagement without the right equipment, in Iraq and later in Afghanistan, was unacceptable and something that no Government should ever allow to happen again.
There are, of course, many more lessons to be drawn from the report of the Iraq inquiry—too many to fit into a single speech—and some of them, I am sure, will be drawn out during the course of the debate today and tomorrow. However, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney said in his statement last week, there are also some lessons and conclusions that we could draw, but should avoid drawing. First, we should not dismiss the importance of solidarity with our close friends and allies, the United States, when our common security interests are threatened. As both President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry have reaffirmed in their respective recent visits to London, the relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom is special. We share not only culture and history, but fundamental values. America is our principal ally and partner around the world, and our partnership remains vital for our continued security and prosperity. Of course, that does not mean that we should blindly or slavishly follow US foreign policy, or fail to speak frankly and honestly, as close friends should. But we must be clear about the value of the relationship between our two countries, and clear that that value is a legitimate factor to be taken into account in British foreign policy decisions. Protecting and enhancing the special relationship, in itself, makes Britain safer.
Secondly, it would be wrong to conclude that we cannot trust the analysis and judgments of the UK intelligence community. As Foreign Secretary, I know as well as anyone the vital contribution our intelligence agencies make to keeping Britain and the British people safe, and I know the risks they sometimes have to take in order to do so. But intelligence is rarely black and white, and it always comes with a calibrated health warning as to the confidence level the user should attach to it. That places a burden of responsibility on the user when decisions or, indeed, strategic communications are based on intelligence. The reforms that were put in place following the Butler report have, quite properly, separated the process of assessing intelligence from the policy making that flows from it. I that believe our intelligence and policy making machinery today is in much better shape than it was in 2003 as a result of this and other reforms.
Thirdly, we should not conclude that our military lacks capability to intervene successfully around the world. As the Chilcot report highlights, the military invasion of Iraq, despite the problems of planning, was successfully and swiftly completed. It was the failure of policy makers to plan for the aftermath that led to the subsequent deterioration in the security situation.
Fourthly, and perhaps most importantly, we must not conclude that military intervention in another country is always wrong. As the NATO intervention in Kosovo in 1999, the British intervention in Sierra Leone in 2000 and the French-led intervention in Mali in 2014 have shown, there are circumstances in which it is absolutely right and appropriate to intervene. Having commemorated just two days ago the 21st anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre, we must also acknowledge that there have   been times in our recent history when the international community should have intervened but did not, with Srebrenica and Rwanda being the most prominent examples.
Despite the risks of action and the failures of the past, Britain must not and will not shrink from military intervention as a last resort when our security is threatened; nor will it resile from its proper role on the world stage. Our commitment to the campaign against Daesh in Iraq and Syria is testament to that resolve. Today the United Kingdom stands united with Iraq in the face of continued terrorism. We will continue to help the Iraqi people as they defeat Daesh, reassert the territorial integrity of their country and seek to build a better future for their children.
There is no greater decision that a Prime Minister and a Cabinet can take than to commit this country to war, to ask our troops to put themselves in harm’s way on our behalf. The decision to invade Iraq and topple its Government in 2003 was among the most controversial in our nation’s recent history. It is right, therefore, that we should seek to learn the lessons from the mistakes that were made, to ensure that they are not repeated in the future.
The report of the Iraq inquiry has been a long time coming, but I think that most agree that it is a thorough, independent and exhaustive piece of work. It does not pull its punches in its analysis, and its conclusions and lessons are clearly drawn and unambiguous. As I set out earlier, I am confident that many of the most important lessons identified in the report have already been learned and the necessary responses already implemented, but in the weeks and months ahead, as we examine the report in greater detail, the Government will look further at whether any additional steps are required.
A decision to wage war is not easily reversible, so it must be carefully and diligently made with proper  regard to due process and legal obligations. War itself is, of course, intrinsically dangerous, so it must be properly prepared for and the people fighting it must  be properly equipped and protected. The aftermath of war is unpredictable but usually ugly, so it must be meticulously planned for and systematically executed. But, subject to those conditions, we should be clear as a nation that we will not resile from the use of military force to protect our security where all other options have failed.
Sir John has done the nation a great service in pointing the way to ensure the proper, safe and legal use of military force. The rest is up to us.

Emily Thornberry: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for that, because it is important to emphasise that there further lessons need to be learned, some of which I hope to address. I will not spend time repeating any of Chilcot’s factual findings, because, looking to the future, we need to consider the lessons and make sure that we do not make any of the same mistakes again. The Secretary of State for Defence will speak later about operational lessons that the military must learn, and it seems to me that there are more lessons than the five that Ministers have outlined so far.
I want to outline some of the points that jump out at us from the report. It seems to me that we have continued to make mistakes during the current Prime Minister’s time in office, and I will explain why.
On the flawed intelligence, although Chilcot finds that no deliberate attempt was made to mislead people, the intelligence on which the war was based was clearly flawed and did not justify the certainty attached to it by the Government. Has that lesson been learned? Last year, the Government asked this House to authorise military action in Syria. In contrast to Iraq in 2003, the military action did not include the deployment of ground troops.

Emily Thornberry: That is a serious point, and I hope that Members will consider it. The question is whether the House was deliberately misled. Chilcot concluded that, although the intelligence may have been flawed and the House misled, it was not deliberately misled. Therefore, in my opinion, if the House tried to make any findings of fact and act on them, it would move away from those previous times when the instrument of a contempt motion has been used. When it has been used previously, there has been a finding of fact upon which the House has been able to act, meaning that someone has either been found guilty or admitted an offence. There has been no admission of deliberately misleading the House, so if the House attempted to  make a factual finding, it would become a kangaroo court, because the person accused would not be allowed represent themselves or speak. In my view, such circumstances would fly in the face of this country’s established principles of justice. Opposition Members are particularly interested in the Human Rights Act, and in article 6, on the right to a fair trial.

Emily Thornberry: I appreciate that there is speculation about what may or may not happen to the former Prime Minister. That is not within my brief today, speaking as the shadow Foreign Secretary and attempting to draw the lessons from Chilcot. It is important that I address  that this afternoon and leave it to others to take such legal action as they think appropriate. It will be for them to take that to the proper court, which will make a decision. We cannot, within the great traditions of our country, constitute ourselves as a court.
Last year, the Government asked this House to authorise military action in Syria. In contrast to Iraq in 2003, the deployment of ground troops was ruled out, which meant a reliance on local forces instead. I mentioned flawed intelligence; at that stage, we were told that there were 70,000 moderate rebels in Syria who would help defeat Daesh, which would force Assad to negotiate a peace agreement and step down. Many of us were sceptical about that 70,000 figure, and I was certainly one of them. That figure was produced by the Joint Intelligence Committee, and the Government declined to say which groups were included in that figure, where they were, what the definition of “moderate” was, how we could be sure that all these rebels were signed up to the coalition’s military strategy, or how they would to get to the battlefield. All those questions mattered.
As the Government acknowledged, no military strategy could succeed without forces on the ground. Time will tell whether those 70,000 moderate Sunni rebels existed and whether they were in a position to fight the battles that it was claimed they would be able to. However, it seems to me that there is a parallel to be drawn between the intelligence that was relied on in relation to the 70,000 figure and the flawed intelligence that has been relied on in the past. It is therefore important for us to learn a lesson from Iraq 12 years earlier. Serious questions have been raised about the intelligence that underpins our decisions to take military action. Once again, Parliament was asked last year simply to take on trust what the Government said about intelligence.
There are further issues to consider, including a lack of ability for people to challenge things internally. Chilcot makes clear that both civil servants and Cabinet Ministers lacked the opportunity, information and encouragement to challenge the case being made to them. The Prime Minister says that his National Security Council has fixed all that, but if so, why does the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy say that the NSC has so far proved itself to be
“a reactive body, rather than a strategic one, which seems to us to be a lost opportunity”?
That criticism is important, and we should not be complacent in the face of it.
The NSC certainly did not challenge the short-sighted and highly damaging cuts to our armed forces in the last Parliament, despite the huge and justifiable misgivings of senior military figures about the impact on our defence capabilities. Nor is there any evidence of the NSC doing anything to challenge the inadequate planning for the aftermath of the intervention in Libya, a subject that I will address shortly. Ultimately, while making progress in small ways, the NSC has failed to address the fundamental problem, which is a culture in Whitehall of overly optimistic group-think, which exposure to independent views could help us challenge. It is not good enough to say that it has been fixed, because it has not. [Interruption.] The Foreign Secretary asks how I know that. I am giving him the evidence of how I know   that there is overly optimistic group-think. It is partly because of the results of decisions that have been taken, but there is more, which I will go into later in my speech.

Emily Thornberry: I am sure that some American generals were disappointed that Harold Wilson would not agree to British involvement in Vietnam, but we got over it and our relationship is strong enough to endure differences of opinion. If we are to be good friends, it is important to recognise that good friends trust each other enough to disagree at times. The 2013 Syria vote made clear that Parliament understood that; it also suggested that the Government did not. That is why it is such a tragedy that cuts to the Foreign Office budget have weakened Whitehall’s institutional knowledge of the world. It is important for our leadership role in the world to have proper understanding of it, and for hundreds of years we have had an insight into the world that other countries have not had. We have a leadership role, and we can have a voice that is different to that of the Americans because we will have a different understanding. To have 16% cuts in the Foreign Office year on year, and a hollowing out of our institutional knowledge, has in my view been a tragedy.

Kenneth Clarke: The decision to invade Iraq was the most disastrous foreign policy decision taken by this country in my lifetime. It did not cause, but it greatly contributed to, the extraordinary problems that have persisted in the middle east and the wider world ever since. I fear it will continue to have tragic consequences for some years to come.
First, we all owe a debt to Sir John Chilcot for producing what will undoubtedly be the most authoritative analysis of how on earth such an appalling blunder came to be made. I certainly have not had the chance to get much beyond the executive summary and just a little bit of the rest of it. It will take a long time before anybody in this House gets through the millions of words that have been produced. The lessons for the inquiry into the Iraq war will be of benefit in particular to specialists: those in the military, the intelligence service, the diplomatic core and politicians—Ministers, shadow Ministers and those who hold the Government to account—for many years to come. It is too soon to follow up on his extremely formidable findings, which I am sure are correct, but there is a role for this House to begin to consider, as we are, its political aspect.
Sir John Chilcot has examined the formal records, meetings and processes. He analysed them to see what happened, but he is not a politician. The House of Commons and the Ministers involved are able to look at this with a slightly different eye. Why did people reach particular decisions? What is it that makes us want to reach those decisions? Where did it go wrong, in particular as far as the collective system of Cabinet Government is concerned, and the accountability, through Parliament, to the wider public? Because Sir John Chilcot is not a politician, I am not sure that he is able to answer on the wider perspective.
I would like to begin by agreeing with one point made by the hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) and say how irrelevant it has been to try to turn all this into a witch hunt against celebrity individuals who were involved at the time. That is one of the great failures of political debate in our day. As far as the wider media and the world were concerned, the recent referendum debate was largely the Dave and Boris show. It is quite pointless to say, “Let’s persecute Tony Blair. He was in charge. Are we going to censure him? Is he going to be prosecuted as a war criminal?” and all the rest of it. That is also true for all the other individuals involved.
The one thing the report makes quite clear is that nobody has committed any crime. As one who was present at the time, I have absolutely no doubt that anybody acted on any other basis than that they believed passionately they were acting in the public interest. One of the great things about Tony Blair was that he did believe passionately in what he was doing at the time. That was very evident on the Floor of the House. He never had a doubt about what he was doing, so I am not surprised that he continues to protest as strongly as he does. He has not changed his mind. He believed he was acting in the national interest in cementing our alliance with the Americans. He thought that was absolutely key to our security. He thought that a British contribution would help the Americans with planning, advocacy and so on. He firmly believed that just removing Saddam Hussein was a virtuous act that would make the world a better place—he still does.
Then, as now, regime change is the point on which he gets most passionate. He really thinks—he is probably right; I agree with him, actually—that he got rid of an evil regime. I agree with those who say that that was not in itself a totally adequate achievement. He certainly believed that the regime had weapons of mass destruction. I faced him in the House, intervening on him and so on. I remember one day thinking, “This is the last man still living who still believes they are going to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.” It was increasingly obvious to everyone else that no such material was going to be found. Pursuing Tony Blair is a complete irrelevance to what the House should be looking at.

Caroline Lucas: I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for giving way and agree with him on the dangers of focusing on just one person. We need to focus on that person, but we also need to focus on the system. However, I worry about the way in which the right hon. and learned Gentleman appears to be letting off that one person from any real responsibility for misleading the House. We only have to read Chilcot to see, for example, how Blair misled the House about the position of the French. The motion Blair moved in  the House stated that,
“it has not proved possible to secure a second Resolution in the UN because one Permanent Member of the Security Council made plain in public its intention to use its veto whatever the circumstances”.—[Official Report, 18 March 2003; Vol. 401, c. 760.]
Yet within a few minutes, even before Prime Minister’s questions, the French were on the phone to Tony Blair saying, “You are deliberately misrepresenting our position.” This happens time and again in the Chilcot report, so while we should not focus only on one man, let us not let him off the hook completely. That does not do any of us any good.

Alex Salmond: If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I want to make my speech.
My point was about the lesson of reconstruction, not the argument for the conflict. It is fair to point out that this country spent 13 times as much bombing Libya as we did on the budget for the reconstruction of Libya. That might provide a lesson about the priority given to the aftermath of conflict, and I am unsure whether the Foreign Secretary has taken it fully on board.
This is about not just the process of government but parliamentary accountability—that is the most fundamental point of all. Parliament has held people to account in the relatively recent past—there was Profumo and the sex scandal, and if I remember correctly, Stephen Byers was accused of misleading Parliament because he nationalised a railway company. Those things were no doubt important, and that line of accountability is crucial, but how much more important is the line of accountability on peace or war, when hundreds of thousands of people lose their lives as a result of decisions made by the Executive?
My contention is that Chilcot provides a huge array of evidence for a lack of parliamentary truthfulness, in that one thing was being said to the President of the United States and quite a different thing was being said to Parliament and the people. That did not happen in just a single speech or parliamentary statement, although the immediate run-up to the war provides ample and  detailed examples. For example, the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) referred to the total misrepresentation of the situation in the United Nations. How do we know that it was a misrepresentation? Because Chilcot has published what was being said within Government, and we can compare that directly with the explanation that Parliament was being offered. The process of Parliament being told one thing while George W. Bush was being assured of something else took place not over a few weeks but over 15 months—that is amply demonstrated in the evidence presented to Chilcot. We know now why Chilcot fought so strongly to have the private memos as part of the report.
The right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe rightly pointed to the motivation of regime change and the difficulty that regime change could not make the war legal in generally understood international terms. That is amply demonstrated in a private memo from Tony Blair to George Bush in December 2001, which states that
“any link to 11 September and AQ”—
al-Qaeda—
“is at best very tenuous; and at present international opinion would be reluctant, outside the US/UK, to support immediate military action though, for sure, people want to be rid of Saddam.
So we need a strategy for regime change that builds over time.”
At the same time, however, when pursuing the Prime Minister in the House, Charles Kennedy was being told that the “two phases” of war included the war in Afghanistan and the pursuit of
“international terrorism in all its different forms. That is a matter of investigating its financing, how terrorists move across frontiers”.—[Official Report, 14 November 2001; Vol. 374, c. 867-868.]
The House was being told that stage 2 of the war on terror was not an assault on Iraq—far less regime change in Iraq—but the pursuit of international terrorism. The two things are totally incompatible. One thing was being said to George Bush in private and another thing was being said to this Parliament and the people of the country.
Moving into 2002, there was something that was amply picked up by the press after Chilcot reported—the memo of 28 July to George Bush, stating:
“I will be with you, whatever.”
I heard the former Prime Minister explain that to John Humphrys on the “Today” programme by saying that of “whatever” meant somehow “wherever”, and that the memo did not give an unconditional commitment to stand with the United States in a war. I am not sure I fully understood that explanation, and crucially, nor did John Chilcot or Jack Straw, a crucial member of the Administration.
Jack Straw’s memos to Tony Blair have also been published. The report shows that on 11 March 2003 Straw wrote to Blair:
“When Bush graciously accepted your offer to be with him all the way, he wanted you alive, not dead!”
That referred not to the mortal danger to troops or civilians that would ensue from a war, but to whether the then Prime Minister would be alive or dead politically. Jack Straw was under no illusions whatever about the commitment that had been given to George Bush. Nor were Tony Blair’s own advisers, who advised him to take it out of the memo, or George Bush and his advisers, or Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Sir John Chilcot concludes, on the meaning of the memo:
“Mr Blair’s Note, which had not been discussed or agreed with his colleagues, set the UK on a path leading to diplomatic activity in the UN and the possibility of participation in military action in a way that would make it very difficult for the UK subsequently to withdraw its support for the US.”
But that was not what Parliament was being told at the same time. Parliament was not told of assurances to George W. Bush on military action. Parliament was told that the Prime Minister was striving for peace and trying to find any way to avoid a conflict, and that it was all up to Saddam to choose peace or conflict. That deliberate misrepresentation, in what was said to Parliament, of what was being said to the Americans continued into the very onset of war itself.
I want to refer to the memo that my hon. Friend the Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (Ms Ahmed-Sheikh) quoted earlier. When Blair was telling Parliament, even in his speech in the war-or-peace debate, that
“I have never put the justification for action as regime change”,—[Official Report, 18 March 2003; Vol. 401, c. 772.]
he was telling George Bush only a few days later:
“That’s why, though Iraq’s WMD is the immediate justification for action, ridding Iraq of Saddam is the real prize.”
We heard earlier that this was not a matter of one man. But that one man was the Prime Minister. We were told earlier that it was really about process of government, but it was the Prime Minister who dictated the process of government and indeed prevented government processes, meaning that checks and balances did not work. Above all, it was the Prime Minister who prevented this House from having the information it required to make a reasonable judgment.
Last week, I heard that one of the defences of intervention in Iraq was a counterfactual argument: what if Saddam Hussein had stayed in power? What would he have done? For example, what damage would he have done during the Arab spring? I have had another counterfactual argument in mind: what if the massive international coalition that was built to deal with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan had been held together? What if the hundreds of billions of dollars that were then to be wasted in the Iraqi desert had been applied to making a real success of the rebuilding of Afghanistan? What if the justification for a totally legal international intervention, which this country took part in, had resulted in a genuine benefit? What if that massive coalition, which extended even to approval from the Palestine Liberation Organisation, had been able to demonstrate that a legal war, correctly applied, could result in construction, reconstruction and allowing a country the investment required to be a shining light of a genuine international intervention?
The United States of America was, in a way, never stronger than in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. It was never more respected, because it had suffered under a terrorist atrocity. What would have happened if an ever broader coalition had brought to fruition the situation that I have described, instead of this meandering into Iraq on a private vendetta of the President of the United States with his closet of neo-con advisers, aided and abetted by a British Prime Minister who subverted collective responsibility and prevented this Parliament from having the information that it required to hold the Government to account?
I once told the former Prime Minister that he would answer to a higher law than this Parliament, and I believe that to be absolutely true. In the meantime, this Parliament should hold him accountable at this stage, not because it is a matter of pursuing him but because it will demonstrate and illustrate that, even retrospectively, if a Parliament is systematically misled, it will say that up with it we shall not put. That is part of the changes that we should make not just in the processes of government, to impose collective responsibility, and not just in, I hope, learning the lessons of how to reconstruct a country, but, essentially, in parliamentary accountability. If we make those changes, we will be able to say legitimately that an Iraq could never happen again.

Dominic Grieve: It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Gordon (Alex Salmond) and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke). There is no doubt that they have two very clear advantages over me in this debate, in that both of them opposed the motion in the House in 2003, which initiated our military action in Iraq. I, on the other hand, supported it—something that I have come very much to regret. I supported it at the time because I was persuaded by the arguments eloquently put forward by the Prime Minister, Mr Blair. He said that, in his view, Saddam Hussein was a real and present danger in the immediate context and that that justified taking military action against him, even without going back for a further resolution of the United Nations Security Council, but relying on the previous resolutions, which, as considerable evidence showed, had been serially breached by Saddam Hussein, certainly in his non co-operation. On that basis, I voted for the motion, as did many others who are still Members and present in this House today.
Sir John Chilcot’s report highlights how the decision-making processes of government can become distorted under pressure of events. I should like to think that I am always a bit wary of that. The distortions highlighted in the report are so considerable that it highlights a dysfunctionality at the heart of Mr Blair’s Government that I hope may have been exceptional to him. For all that, there are plenty of cautionary tales for us in this House today that we can look at in the current context just as much as they should have been considered at the time.
This point seems to have been rather well made already and I will not repeat it, but because Mr Blair had formed in his view a very strong resolution that we should support the United States, including in removing Saddam Hussein and effecting regime change, the entirety of the processes of government and of Whitehall were then skewed in order to achieve that aim and had the mischief of disregarding all the evidence that might be available to contradict the belief that that was the right course of action to take—whether it was intelligence information or the thorny problem of legality, both of which I wish to touch on briefly this afternoon.
On the question of the intelligence, those of us who have been in government, or who have served on the National Security Council as I have—indeed it is also true of my current role as Chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee—know perfectly well that  intelligence, which is often obtained at great risk and with difficulty, can only be a tool in decision making. The intelligence may be mistaken. One cannot prevent that in a human society, and one cannot guarantee that its interpretation will be correct. My impression during my time in government was that the intelligence agencies and the Joint Intelligence Committee now go to very considerable lengths to point out the limits of the use to which intelligence can properly be put—a lesson which, I suspect, they derived from the experience of the Iraq war.
Reading Sir John Chilcot’s report, one can only conclude that the way in which intelligence was handled during the run-up to the Iraq war is, in some cases, truly breathtaking. It makes very troublesome reading. I hope very much—I am not going to say anything more about this—that those within the agencies who now do the work will read and reread Sir John’s report in order to remind themselves how perfectly reasonable intelligence was skewed and, I have to say, misused for the purposes of justifying a theory, and then, I am afraid, misused by Mr Blair when he came to address this House in the defining moment before the war was sanctioned by this Parliament.
The certainties that were engendered were never present. My right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr Lilley) made a very good intervention about this last week when he said that if we had taken the time and trouble to read some of the background information available, we might have doubted some of the certainties that were being expressed. I think he was absolutely right about that, and that is another burden that Members of this House who participated in that debate will have to bear.
So much for the intelligence. What about the process of legal advice? I was at the heart of trying to provide legal advice to Government when I was a Law Officer. My hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor General is on the Front Bench and he, too, has been involved in those processes. As Law Officers know, legal advice is often advice which cannot in any way be certain. Legal advice is exactly that. In some cases, particularly when one is dealing with international law, the question whether one is on the right side or the wrong side of international law is an intensely grey area, precisely because there is no ultimate tribunal to determine those issues. Yet at the heart of the British Government’s doctrine and ethics is the principle that we have to act lawfully at all times. It is for the Law Officers to try to steer that course.
What shines through to me, reading the Chilcot inquiry report, is not, as some critics have said, that Lord Goldsmith as Attorney General abandoned legal objectivity. Now that I have read the Chilcot inquiry report and looked at these passages very carefully, it seems to me that he fulfilled those criteria as best he possibly could, but that he was drawn into a process which in itself was utterly flawed, because it cherry-picked whatever bit of the advice that he provided suited those who wanted to present it, and then sold it in that way both to the Cabinet, who never properly inquired or scrutinised it at all, and ultimately to the public.

Dominic Grieve: I quote from paragraph 810 of the executive summary:
“It is an essential part of the legal basis for military action”—
this was written by an official in the Attorney General’s Department—
“without a further resolution of the Security Council that there is strong evidence that Iraq has failed to comply with and co-operate fully in the implementation of resolution 1441 and has thus failed to take the final opportunity offered by the Security Council in that resolution. The Attorney General understands that it is unequivocally the Prime Minister’s view that Iraq has committed further material breaches as specified in [operative] paragraph 4 of resolution 1441, but as this is a judgment for the Prime Minister, the Attorney would be grateful for confirmation that this is the case.”
It is important to understand one of the big changes that has probably taken place between 2003 and today in the way in which a Law Officer’s advice is secured. My impression from reading Chilcot—I hope I have got this right—is that, in practice, the Attorney General was provided with only sketched backgrounds of the factual analysis on which his legal opinion was being sought. The big difference now, and I can tell the House this without giving away state secrets, is that if Law Officers are asked to advise on a factual basis that involves a serious or complex problem of international law, they will receive briefing that is as good as, and—if they demand it—potentially better than, that which is provided to the Prime Minister himself as to the intelligence and factual base, and they make their own independent assessment. However, it is quite clear that, in 2003, and, I suspect, even before then—I do not think this was peculiar to 2003—that was not the practice that was adopted; it was not how Government worked. In practice, the Law Officer, Lord Goldsmith, was placed in a position where he had, reasonably, to take on trust the factual assessments made by others, and particularly the Prime Minister.
I cannot make a judgment on whether Lord Goldsmith’s advice of 7 March was right or not, but he set out—correctly, in my view—the alternative interpretations available for resolution 1441. I simply make the point, as I did in my intervention, that there are areas of international law that raise massive difficulties of interpretation. If, for example, we stuck, as some jurists would argue, to the principle that no military intervention can take place without UN Security Council authorisation, the well-established United Kingdom doctrine of intervening on the basis of humanitarian necessity, which is what led us to be able to take action in Kosovo, would never have come about. I simply chuck that into the pool of the debate to try to understand some of the complexities.
Of course, none of that gets away from the fact that the debate would likely have been very different in Cabinet if Lord Goldsmith’s advice in its original form had been properly presented, circulated and discussed. As any of us who have been in government know, the process by which we moderate each other’s opinions is by challenging them. If we do not have a process of challenge, we should not be surprised if, at the end of the day, people simply end up rubber-stamping decisions  because it appears convenient to do so. One of the interesting features, I might add, of being in coalition was that one quickly realised that because some members of, for example, the National Security Council or the Cabinet were not beholden to the Prime Minister, the level of challenge was raised in a manner that one might not necessarily have found in a single-party Government, which is an interesting reflection on some of the problems that flow from it. Of course, when one has a Prime Minister who is utterly dominant after four or five years in government and receiving a triumphant second mandate, these things become even harder.
Those, then, are my thoughts on those two principal issues. There are lots of other issues in the report, which is one of the most compelling reads I have had. I am not sure I am going to be able to get through the whole lot, but I will certainly try to read much more of it.
Let me just make two final points. First, the right hon. Member for Gordon (Alex Salmond) expressed the desire that accountability should lead to somebody being held at least in contempt of this House if Mr Blair did act improperly. I simply say to him that, just as some people were talking about impeachment, which was last used in 1806, contempt proceedings in Parliament—unless they are based on findings made in an external tribunal that meets article 6 of the European convention on human rights—will, in practice, be very difficult. I would strongly argue that, tempting as such a route might suggest itself to be, the practical difficulties are likely to make it impossible to follow. I say that in all sincerity.

Margaret Beckett: I want to begin where the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), who has just spoken very eloquently, ended. I entirely agree that there is much to learn from the Chilcot report. One of the things that I am most concerned about—I know that it is very early to say this—is that it is far from clear to me that we are actually going to learn the things that we should.
On the morning of the publication of the Chilcot report, I listened to the radio and heard a number of commentators and, indeed, Members of this House, including, I think the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), saying one after another, “Of course, we all know what happened.” The script was simple and familiar: “Tony Blair knew there were no weapons of mass destruction. He deliberately lied to the House of Commons about whether there was intelligence  to suggest that there were such weapons. He made a secret pact with George Bush long before the war, committing us to it in all circumstances, so everything that happened in between was irrelevant, and the war itself was illegal because there was no second United Nations resolution.”
It seems to me that this is the right moment to point out that this is, I think, the fifth inquiry into what happened in 2003 and before and after the invasion, and, as far as I recall, none of them have verified that incredibly simply script. Nor does it seem to me that the Chilcot report confirms it.
The inquiry team accepts, as have the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) and the former Attorney General, the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield, that when the Prime Minister told this House that he believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, he believed it implicitly to be true. He was not making up the intelligence or telling this House anything other than what he believed to be true, let alone inventing a lie, which seems to be being implied. Indeed, the report points out that the basic case that Saddam Hussein had retained weapons of mass destruction and that he had the intent to develop more, given the opportunity, was what the Joint Intelligence Committee itself believed.
It seems to me that one of the most important things that comes out of Chilcot—the former Attorney General touched on this—is the degree to which whole swathes of people whose professional judgement was involved were mistaken, and that continued to be the case right up to and, indeed, beyond the invasion. Chilcot makes clear that that is what the Joint Intelligence Committee had continually reported both to the then Prime Minister and to the Cabinet. The report states:
“There is no evidence that intelligence was improperly included in the dossier or that No. 10 improperly influenced the text…The Inquiry is not questioning Mr Blair’s belief, which he consistently reiterated…or his legitimate role in advocating Government policy.”
It is really important to bear that in mind, especially as one listens to some of the detailed and very determined attempts to create a different impression.
Sir John Chilcot also pointed out that, along with the dangers that the intelligence community believed that Saddam Hussein presented, it believed that,
“Saddam Hussein could not be removed without an invasion.”
That was also thought to be relevant.
Of course, with the benefit of hindsight we all know that the intelligence community and the then Prime Minister were wrong, but we did not know it then. What is more, what our intelligence services believed was believed by almost every other intelligence service in the world, including the French and the Russians, and there is no doubt that that is why Security Council resolution 1441 was carried unanimously.

Margaret Beckett: I know about the quote from Sir Richard Dearlove and I know that he expressed that view, as I recall, quite some time before, because I do not think he was in post at the time we are speaking of. I accept that it was serious and difficult, but if Saddam had shown any intention of complying or made any move to readmit inspectors—for example, a series of tests was proposed that Saddam could meet to show whether he was complying, but all that was rejected—by the French, by the way, and also by Saddam. So that is where we are. There was, indeed, a warning that if Saddam complied, military action would not occur.
That is the original four-point series of accusations. To that story, three further accusations have now been added. The first, from the Chilcot report, is that action was taken when it was not a matter of the last resort. The second is that we could have held back longer and the whole matter could have been addressed by further inspections. The third was that the events that have since taken place in the middle east are all a result of the Iraq invasion, and that that too should lie on the consciences of all of us who voted for it.
The point about whether the intervention was a last resort was also raised by my late right hon. Friend, Robin Cook, and those who make that case rest their argument on the continued effectiveness of containment backed by sanctions. What nobody seems to mention any more is that at that time, it was widely and seriously believed that containment was weakening and ceasing to be effective. Anyone who was around can cast their mind back and recall that there was an enormous and growing campaign against the sanctions that were helping to keep in place the hoped-for containment. Many right hon. and hon. Members will recall the protests that took place continually, across the road in Parliament Square, but nearly everybody has forgotten that that was not at first a protest against the war; it was a protest against the maintenance of sanctions against Saddam Hussein. To be fair to those who undertook that protest, it was done on a perfectly legitimate and understandable basis, because Saddam was stealing money that was being given to feed the Iraqi people and using it for his own purposes, and consequently there was growing poverty and hardship in Iraq. It was understandable that people should have been against sanctions on that basis, and they were, and the campaign against those sanctions was growing.

David Davis: It is a privilege to follow the right hon. Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett), although I felt that at the end she destroyed her own argument by attributing to other people views that nobody holds: that somehow IS is allowed off the hook of blame because of the weaknesses and failures of the British Government.
Let us be clear what those failures are: 150,000 deaths by violence, a large majority of them innocent civilians; over 1 million deaths, on medical estimates, as a result of this war; and a destroyed country. Iraq was a nasty dictatorship, but containment—sanctions, inspections when they were allowed, and no-fly zones—was broadly working. There was damage to the stability of the middle east. Of course it is not the entire story, but let us not forget that IS started in an American prisoner-of-war camp in Iraq. That is where its high command comes from, so let us not put that to one side either. There has been a significantly increased terrorist threat worldwide, something that was known and warned about before we took this action. That is what we are talking about. That is what the worst foreign policy mistake in our modern history means for many, many innocent people in the world.
In the 1990s, before that happened, I had responsibility for counter-proliferation in the Conservative Government of the time. I accept that the behaviour of the Saddam  Hussein regime was peculiar to say the least. As far as we could tell from inspections and our intelligence, it did not have WMD or a workable WMD programme but was deliberately trying to create confusion about that, by not co-operating from time to time, by moving trucks from one site to another before inspectors arrived, and so on. It was probably doing that to keep Iran convinced that it had a WMD programme. That was what it was worried about—not us, but its next-door neighbour against which it had fought a massive war shortly before. That explains some of the strange behaviour of the regime.
At that time and—I guess—up until just before 2001, the general belief was that this was a moderate and controllable threat. Indeed, Carne Ross, the middle east specialist among our delegation to the UN, said that when he first took the job he was briefed:
“Basically we don’t think there’s anything there. We are justifying sanctions on the basis that Iraq has not answered questions about its past stocks”.
Since then, all the JIC, SIS and GCHQ reports have corroborated that. It was considered a moderate and controllable threat at that point.
Then what happened? We had 9/11, which, quite properly, shocked the world: 3,000 deaths in a hideous terrorist spectacular. Of course, Tony Blair justifies his actions on that basis, but I have to say to him that this was a reason for getting it right, not an excuse for getting it wrong. There was understandable paranoia that something like it might happen again, either here or somewhere else, but then there came a dangerous and simplistic conflation of the real, present and continuing threat from al-Qaeda and Iraq—the axis of evil nonsense that President Bush generated at the time. This fiction was reinforced in February 2002, when the Americans rendered to Egypt somebody called Sheikh al-Libi, who was tortured on the question of whether there was a chemical and biological weapons relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda. Essentially, he was tortured until he said yes, and that was the evidence that Colin Powell cited at the United Nations—the House might remember—when he talked about having “substantial evidence”. Of course, it was a fiction obtained under torture.
I am quite sure that that intelligence was shared with Mr Blair, who, not knowing the source, would have found it persuasive, as something told to the Americans by an al-Qaeda commander. It seems from the Chilcot report that, at some point between December 2001 and possibly March 2002 but certainly by July 2002, Mr Blair effectively signed Britain up to the American military effort. As my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) said, the issue was not our soldiers but our reputation. It was our involvement that legitimised the American action.
This, however, produced a problem for our Prime Minister. Under American law, to go to war on the basis of regime change is entirely legal. They do not recognise the international laws that render it otherwise, so for them regime change is a perfectly legitimate casus belli. From comments made and the items to which the right hon. Member for Gordon (Alex Salmond) referred, it seems that Tony Blair agreed, but he had a problem, because our law and international law did not allow it. He therefore saw his role as building a coalition to support the Americans.
There was nothing dishonourable in that, if Tony Blair believed the aim, but to do it he had to achieve a number of things. He had to create a casus belli under international law, and for that he needed proof of weapons of mass destruction and of a terrorist threat and a UN resolution and thereby proof of legality. The result was UN resolution 1441, the thrust of which was that it was the final opportunity for Iraq to comply with its disarmament obligations. The vote was 15:0 in favour. As the right hon. Member for Derby South said, it did not include a deliberate trigger to war; it required a further resolution. The UN inspectorate went in and did 700 inspections of over 500 sites. Interestingly, it went to three dozen sites given to it by the CIA and MI6, who thought that was where the weapons were located. The inspectorate found not a thing—over three and a half months, it found nothing whatsoever.
Then the American President set a timetable, creating a real problem over and above the United Nations—war by March. That is why Chilcot said that going to war was not the last resort. It was not. It gave Mr Blair a problem. What should he do? Many other countries, including France and Russia, viewed the inspection process as incomplete—and, of course, it was. The UN vote was then lost by 11 to four, so when Blair returned to the UK, he had to win a debate and vote in the House of Commons. He made what some people think was the greatest speech of his life, but in order to persuade us, he had to say five things that were a clear misrepresentation.
Mr Blair accused France of saying that it would never vote for war. That was simply not true, and he knew it was not true. I refer to an interview given on Radio 4 in the last year by Sir Stephen Wall. As a Foreign Office adviser in No. 10, he was privy to what was going on and clarified what was really said, which was that, effectively, “As of now, France will vote against”. When he was asked whether Downing Street deliberately lied about Chirac’s statement, he said yes, it deliberately lied.
The next two misrepresentations were quotations from the UN inspectors’ reports. Time is short, so let me read briefly what was said by Hans Blix, the head of the inspectorate. Speaking of the British Government, he said:
“If they had gone to the British Parliament in 2003 and said that we have a lot of things unaccounted for here, and we suspect there may be something, and we think it is safer to invade them, would the British Parliament have dreamt of saying yes to such a thing? I don’t think so. I think in order to go ahead they needed to make the allegations which they made and which were not sustainable…In substance yes they misrepresented what we did and they did so in order to get the authorisation they shouldn’t have had.”
That was Hans Blix’s view of what Tony Blair did in the House of Commons. Mr Blair also misrepresented what Hussein Kamel, Saddam Hussein’s son-in-law, had told the allies about the WMD programme.

Hilary Benn: I freely acknowledge that one of the failures, which is set out clearly in the report, was the failure to plan in advance of the decision taken on 18 March 2003. Indeed, there are lessons that we must learn from that. The truth is, however, that Iraq was a suppressed, repressed and brutalised society in which Saddam was the lid on the pressure cooker, and when he left, the lid came off. We have seen that in other countries, too—Libya has already been mentioned.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Derby South rightly said that those who seek to blame the decision to invade for all the subsequent events miss the responsibility that others have for what has gone on. We must take our share of the responsibility, and disbanding the Iraqi army—which meant that thousands of men had no salary and no income, but had a gun and a grievance—was a profound mistake. But Iraqi politicians also have to bear a responsibility for the sectarian policies they have pursued, and those who still engage in suicide bombing  cannot turn to us and say, “Look what you made me do”. They must bear responsibility for what they themselves have chosen to do to their fellow citizens.
The best evidence for the difference that good politics and good governance can make in Iraq is shown by the Kurdish region, which, let us not forget, was as it was partly because of the support we had given it through the no-fly zone. As a result, it is now the most stable and relatively prosperous part of Iraq. I pay tribute, as others have, to the peshmerga for the role that they have played, and still play, in trying to defeat Daesh.
The Kurds regard the 2003 invasion as a liberation. Karwan Jamal Tahir, the Kurdistan Regional Government representative to the UK, wrote this week about the Chilcot report that
“there was an Iraq before the 2003 invasion, an Iraq that, for millions, was a concentration camp on the surface and a mass grave beneath.”
We only have to read the reports of Human Rights Watch to see what it had to say at the time about the mass executions, the mass disappearances, the use of chemical weapons, the suppression of the Shi’a majority, particularly after the 1991 uprising, and the attempt by Saddam to eradicate the population and culture of the Marsh Arabs, who had resided continuously in the marshlands for more than 5,000 years. That was what life was like, and we should not forget it.
At least today Iraq has a fragile democracy, and whatever our views on the decision 13 years ago, we have a continuing responsibility to assist, especially when the democratically elected Government ask for our help. That is why this House was right in 2014 to provide support in helping them defeat Daesh, and we have seen the benefit of that support in the progress made in the months since. We have also discovered more about what Daesh does as towns have been liberated. That is why this House was right to vote unanimously to describe what is being done to the Yazidis, Christians and other religious minorities in Iraq and Syria as
“genocide at the hands of Daesh.”
I wish the Government would do what the House asked and take that to the UN Security Council so that it can be passed on to the International Criminal Court.
Finally, I turn to the wider lessons. For too long in foreign affairs, Governments have argued, “Better the strong man we know than the chaos we fear”, even when that strong man is a brutal murdering dictator. Yet look at what happens when the strong man falls in Libya, in Egypt and, indeed, in Iraq.
Three years after the end of the second world war, the UN General Assembly adopted and proclaimed the universal declaration of human rights. Article 3 states:
“Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.”
Article 28 states:
“Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realised.”
Yet for millions of people in the world those rights, so nobly expressed, have remained just words on paper, and they were certainly just words on paper during Saddam’s rule. Surely that will not do. Having created the UN, why do we not have the responsibility to ensure that the principles of the universal declaration of human rights are given universal expression internationally, exactly as we have managed to achieve, for example, in  our own country over many years? It is the responsibility of the UN Security Council to do that. That was why we created the UN, which has a moral responsibility and a legitimacy to act, and it is why I am a strong supporter of the responsibility to protect. That principle says that state sovereignty is not absolute and the international community has a responsibility to act in certain circumstances.
Finally, even though this is unspoken in the report, I think Chilcot forces us to consider that while there are consequences to taking action—we meet here today to discuss them and their legacy—there are also always consequences of not doing so. For me, that is the most important lesson of Iraq, both before and after 2003.

Andrew Mitchell: The hon. Gentleman makes a point about the absolute importance of having proper accountable structures, not informal machineries of government, as I was saying.
Moving on to the Libya campaign, there was a proper process by which legal advice was given to the Cabinet. Britain’s humanitarian responsibilities in the conflict were made clear at the first Cabinet meeting that authorised military action. The National Security Council met on numerous occasions, as did an inner, sub-committee of the NSC on which I sat. In addition to the conduct of the campaign, we discussed the humanitarian situation and the preparations for stabilisation on a daily basis. There was of course no invasion as such, but the Defence Secretary took personal responsibility for targeting to ensure that collateral damage was minimised, and the loss of civilian life was mercifully extremely limited.
On discharging our humanitarian responsibility, lessons were carefully learned and, as the Foreign Secretary emphasised, Britain did a good job indeed. We organised the planes and ships that successfully transported thousands of migrant workers home or to places of safety as far afield as the Philippines and Baghdad to remove them from harm’s way. The evacuation of 5,000 migrants  from the quayside at Misrata was a feat greatly assisted by Britain and for which the international community deserves the highest praise. When Tripoli was in danger of running out of water, it was DFID and the United Nations that successfully implemented our plan to prevent an emergency. The provision of food and medicines to conflict areas of Libya without either was also successfully accomplished.
My point is that specific lessons from the failures in Iraq were understood and implemented in respect of our humanitarian responsibilities. However, it is post-conflict stabilisation that attracts strong criticism regarding Iraq and Libya, where it is clear today that stabilisation is currently a failure. I want to make it clear that lessons were learned and that our focus on post-conflict stabilisation was absolute immediately after military action started. Britain set up an international stabilisation unit and worked closely with the UN, which was to have lead responsibility for stabilisation when the conflict ended. Britain supplied expertise, officials and funding, drawing on the lessons of Iraq. During the war, we gave technical support to the central bank and to such organs of the state that existed. Indeed, in contrast with Iraq, where the police and security services were simply abolished, we took specific significant steps to ensure that the police in Libya, who had not been engaged in human rights abuses, could be reassured by text message, for example, that they still had a job and should report for duty when the fighting diminished.
We prepared extensively, particularly through the support that we gave to UN institutions, to help stabilise Libya’s future, but we faced the simple problem that there was no peace to stabilise when the war was over and that in a country with limited structures outside the Gaddafi family the different factions were fractured and splintered. You can make all the plans you like for post-conflict stabilisation, but if there is no peace to stabilise, the international community’s non-military options are severely limited.
Lessons learned from Iraq and then applied in Libya have continued in respect of the British efforts in Syria. We have already made a huge funding commitment to stabilise the country when peace finally comes. We have played a more comprehensive role in humanitarian relief in and around Syria than the whole of the rest of the European Union put together. We were also the first country to put significant sums of taxpayers’ money into the Zaatari refugee camp in 2012, because we understood the approaching calamity.
The lessons we learn from the Chilcot Report will shape our understanding of our place in the world. Will we continue to support the cause of liberal interventionism, as we successfully did in Sierra Leone and Kosovo, or will the House turn its back on discretionary intervention, even under UN auspices, and be prepared to stand idly by if—God forbid—another Rwandan genocide takes place? The post-Chilcot era will, I hope, see the right lessons learned and ensure that Britain remains a key international influence for good, willing to take military action, certainly as a last resort, when the situation requires it.

Tim Farron: The decision to go to war is undoubtedly the most difficult one that any Prime Minister, leader or Member of this  House will ever have to take. The Liberal Democrats are not pacifists—I am not a pacifist—but we believe that military action should be used only as a last resort, following the failure of diplomacy, and only in accordance with law. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 did not meet those tests, which is why, led by Charles Kennedy 13 years ago, the Liberal Democrats opposed the war. That reasoned opposition was met with vile derision by both the Government and the Conservative Opposition at the time. Thirteen years and 2 million words later, those voices have been silenced and Charles Kennedy is vindicated. It is a tragedy that he is not here to experience that vindication, and it is equally a tragedy that neither is Robin Cook. Chilcot’s conclusion is exactly what so many of us have known for more than 13 years: there was no legal or strategic case for the invasion of Iraq; it was “unnecessary”; and military action was “not a last resort”. Instead of improving our security, it in fact made our country, their country and the world we share less safe.
In the case of Iraq, Mr Blair appeared to be more concerned with supporting American President George Bush than he was in pursuing British interests and the interests of the Iraqi people. The most infamous quote—
“I will be with you, whatever”—
was not written to the Iraqi people, suffering under the undeniably cruel regime of such a brutal dictator, nor was it written to the British public as a clear display of the priorities of our elected leader. Instead, it was written to a neo-conservative US President intent on proving American superiority by waging war against an abstract noun. This was a President who was failing to make dramatic advances in Afghanistan, so instead he settled his sights on Iraq, despite the fact that, as Chilcot stresses on a number of occasions, the overall threat from Iraq was viewed as less serious than those from other countries of concern—Iran, Libya and North Korea.
Mr Blair was clearly determined to follow the US into war, no matter the consequences, and he effectively committed us to the Americans, no matter the evidence. We had, we have and I hope we will continue to have an intimate and rewarding relationship with the US, but we cannot allow our foreign policy to be defined by that relationship alone; “my ally right or wrong” is not a sustainable independent foreign policy. The strength of that unwavering commitment gave rise to the error of making the evidence fit the judgment, rather than the judgment fit the evidence. Nowhere is that clearer than when it came to the legal basis of war.
The Attorney General’s final view was little more than lukewarm, being that this was,
“on balance, the better view”.
I believe that if we are to commit thousands of our young men and women to circumstances where their lives will be put at risk, we need something a little bit better and more certain than “on balance”. Going forward, we must ensure that there is no ambiguity in the legal advice provided to the Government or Parliament on matters of military action.
We must also be clear on what the end goal or exit plan is for any intervention. Despite its being clear very quickly that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the UK found itself assuming leadership of a military area of responsibility. Not only that, but it is  evident that, despite being a joint occupying power, the UK had little or no influence on the overall strategy of the Americans, leaving us blindly following their flawed lead. The US strategy included the policy of de-ba’athification, which collapsed the Iraqi state and disbanded the army, creating a disfranchised and angry group of well-trained military leaders, many of whom went on to fight the occupation and, ultimately, to form Daesh. That appalling error directly contributed to the following six years of chaotic destruction, which saw so many of our armed forces put on the frontline without a proper strategy.
I hope that the Iraq inquiry—the Chilcot inquiry—will bring some comfort to the families of the 179 servicemen and women killed in Iraq, but there can be no justification for their being deployed to fight on a battlefield for which the proper preparation was not done. There is no doubt that the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003 have directly contributed to the threats that the world now faces from Daesh and instability in the middle east.
As I stood shoulder to shoulder with Iraqis at the vigil held in London last week to remember the lives of those lost in the most recent attacks in Baghdad, it was clear to me what legacy has been left. Just last week, more than 300 people died in suicide attacks in Baghdad on top of the tragedies that we have seen in Istanbul, Paris and elsewhere. Terrorists are responsible for those horrific events, but the Iraq war is responsible for creating the vacuum in which terrorism and Daesh were formed, and through which anti-western sentiment has thrived, and that has happened despite our being advised at the time that that was a risk.
Liberal Democrats are outward-facing internationalists. We believe that Britain should engage in the world, not turn its back on it, and that our country has a strong role to play in promoting democracy, human rights and the rule of law across the globe. Sometimes—rarely—that will mean taking military action, but the Iraq war has tarnished our reputation, ignored international law and undermined international institutions such as the United Nations, which we worked so hard at building in the aftermath of two world wars. It destroyed public confidence in our leaders and in Parliament, and it made it infinitely more difficult for a Government to make the case for war by making the prospect of humanitarian intervention all the more unpalatable to many.

George Howarth: I will not give way to the hon. Lady because I have very limited time.
It seemed to me that resolution 1441 and all the previous resolutions had to be upheld; otherwise, international collective will would have been meaningless.
There was, however, another important humanitarian reason why I felt compelled to support the proposed action. Having spoken to many Iraqis who were on the receiving end of vicious attacks and repression by Saddam Hussein’s regime, particularly Iraqi Kurds, I felt strongly that the course of non-action would be an abdication of humanitarian responsibility. That viewpoint was very much influenced by my right hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd), who had unrivalled knowledge about what was actually happening in Iraq at the time and the appalling abuse of human rights that by then was beyond question.
Following the action in Iraq in 2003, I visited both Baghdad and Basra in March 2005, together with the hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) who, at the time, was the Member for Henley. The purpose of that visit was to attend the inauguration of the Transitional National Assembly. In an article in The Spectator of 19 March 2005, following the visit, he concluded:
“It could all still just about work, and if it does, I think it will still be possible to draw a positive balance on this venture.”
In an interview in the North Wales edition of the Daily Post on 18 March 2005, another member of the delegation, Elfyn Llwyd, the then Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy, said that although he had opposed the action in Iraq,
“Politicians across the spectrum do not want us to withdraw immediately.”
The then hon. Member for Henley concluded his Spectator article with the words of an Iraqi Minister:
“‘Thank you, people of Britain, for what you have done! We give you our thanks and our praise and our love. You built this country eight decades ago, and it didn’t work. Now you are rebuilding it and it has to work.’”
The point of those two quotes is that although there were still massive problems of sectarian violence and the challenge of restoring vital public services, the political outlook at that time was moderately hopeful. It was clear from talking to people from different parties, different religions and different backgrounds that that hope existed.
During the following two years I visited Iraq on a further two occasions—first, as the Chair of the Committee considering the Armed Forces Bill, and on another occasion with my right hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley. Two things became apparent during those visits. The first was that progress towards stability was painfully slow and the optimism that there had been in 2005 was ebbing away. The second was that the post-conflict planning had not been successful. The Foreign Secretary referred to the failure of the de-ba’athification programme. Condoleezza Rice, who was then the National Security Adviser, has said that neither she, nor the Secretary of State at the time, Colin Powell, were even consulted about that decision. That was another failure of process.
Those of us who voted for action are often asked, legitimately, whether we regret it. Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn),  I cannot regret the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. What I do regret is the fact that the post-conflict planning was not successful.

Jeffrey M. Donaldson: I was a Member of this House when we heard the former Prime Minister present his compelling case. I voted to go to war. I did so in the full knowledge that my brother, who was at that time serving with our armed forces, was poised in Kuwait to cross the border as part of one of the first units into Iraq. I want to quote the words of Colonel Tim Collins, then commander of 1 Battalion The Royal Irish Regiment, who were also poised to enter Iraq:
“We go to liberate, not to conquer…We will not fly our flags in their country. We are entering Iraq to free a people and the only flag which will be flown in that ancient land is their own…We will bring shame on neither our uniform or our nation.”
I think we can all agree on one thing in this House: that our armed forces did not bring shame on this nation—that they did their best in very difficult circumstances and achieved many of the objectives that had been set for them. We owe it to our armed forces to ask questions and to examine this report very carefully. Will we learn the lessons, not least on the lines of accountability in terms of decisions that we make, as politicians, when going to war?
I believe it is right that we examine the question of whether the former Prime Minister should be held to account for the advice that he gave Parliament. I am  clear that I voted to go to war based on the advice— the information—that he laid before this House when we made that decision. It is therefore right that we examine the advice that he gave, or the information that he made available to us, and consider whether he potentially misled this House. We will listen carefully to what others have to say before we decide how to vote on this question, but we have an open mind on the matter. We pay tribute to our armed forces, especially to those who laid down their lives in Iraq, and to their families.
I have to say in defence of the former Prime Minister, whom I have heard called a number of things in recent weeks, that I worked very closely with him on the peace process in Northern Ireland, and the idea that he is a terrorist, or a supporter of terrorism, is wrong. No one did more to bring an end to terrorism in Northern Ireland, or at least as far as it goes at the present time, than the former Prime Minister. While sometimes I disagreed with the way that he went about things in Northern Ireland, and sometimes he acted with the best of intentions, I have to say that sometimes he blurred the lines, and this is part of the problem. Perhaps he was acting out of the best of intentions with regard to Iraq, but I do not think he was wholly honest with this House in the information that he put before us. We need to address that.
The other issue that we are concerned about is the resources that were made available. I do not believe that the soldiers and armed forces on the frontline were properly equipped. We need to address that. It is not good enough for us to send our armed forces to war without equipping them properly. Nor is it good enough for us to send them to war without a clear exit strategy or plan, or to walk away, as we did in 2007, without having finished the job properly. It is not right to adopt such a cut-and-run policy. When we go into a country, we cannot walk away without fully considering the consequences and following through on that. We need to not only identify lessons from the report, but act on them, and to ensure in particular that our armed forces receive the support they require when we send them into combat. That is vital.
One of the things that flowed from the Iraq war was the need to support our veterans who have sustained injuries, to their physical and—as in many cases—their mental health. We are not doing enough. I fully support the armed forces covenant and welcome what this Government have endeavoured to do, but the reality is that too many of us are dealing with constituents who are not receiving the help that they need as a result of the consequences of their service to our country.
Yes, let us accept that we have a collective responsibility to learn the political lessons that flow from the report, and let us consider whether we need to hold to account those who guided this House to its decision to send our armed forces to war in Iraq; but let us also ensure that the men and women who served our country on the foot of that decision get the support that they need when they are in combat and when they are injured as a result of combat.

Ian Austin: I start by paying tribute to all who served in the forces in Iraq, especially those, and the families of those, who were injured or lost their lives. It is absolutely clear from this debate and from last week’s statement that the Chilcot report will never settle arguments about whether the war was right or wrong, but it should lay to rest allegations about bad faith, lies or deceit.
First, the report finds that there was no falsification or misuse of intelligence by Tony Blair or No. 10. Secondly, it finds that there was no attempt to deceive Cabinet Ministers. Thirdly, it finds that there was no  secret pact with the US to go to war. That means there is no justification for saying that evidence was “confected” or that the case for war was a “deception”, which is exactly what the Leader of the Opposition claimed in his response last week. He claimed that it created a colonial-style occupation, although the UN endorsed the west’s presence after the invasion, and the 2005 elections and referendum on a new constitution gave power to Iraqis.
To listen to Tony Blair’s critics, anyone would think that Iraq had been a peaceful haven of tranquillity before 2003, but nothing could be further from the truth. In Iraq, Saddam Hussain perpetrated the largest chemical weapons attack against civilians in history, killing thousands. He led a brutal reprisal against Iraq’s Shi’a majority, slaughtering up to 100,000 Iraqis in just one month—more than in any year since 2003. Abroad, he supported terrorism, offering al-Qaeda sanctuary, training and assistance in planning attacks.
The report does not say that Tony Blair ordered the falsification of intelligence that stated that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction. UN resolutions required Saddam to demonstrate that weapons of mass destruction did not exist, but he acted as though they did, presumably because that helped him to subjugate his people. His refusal to co-operate with UN inspectors led intelligence services right around the world to believe that he did, in fact, possess those weapons. Even countries that were opposed to military action, such as France, Russia and Germany, believed that he had those weapons. The debate in 2003 was not about whether Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction, but about how to deal with them.
Of course, we must learn the lessons of mistakes made after the invasion of Iraq, but we must also learn the lessons of not taking action. British intervention in Kosovo and Sierra Leone prevented people being from slaughtered. Libya was already in a brutal civil war before western air forces prevented Gaddafi from killing innocent people in Benghazi, but without support afterwards the country is a huge problem for the whole of north Africa and the wider region. Not intervening in Syria did not prevent the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophe, hundreds of thousands of deaths or millions of refugees, let alone terrorist attacks not just in Syria but in Tunisia and Europe.
I also want to deal with the claim that toppling Saddam led to ISIS or, as we are so often told, plunged the middle east into chaos. As Martin Chulov, The Guardian’s middle east editor and author of a definitive study of ISIS, says:
“The Syrian civil war was not driven by Isis. It fed directly out of the Arab awakenings and was a bid to oust a ruthless regime from power. Assad could not have prevailed against the will of the streets. So he tried to transform the uprising into something that was driven by internationally-backed global jihad. Isis grew out of the chaos. They flourished with Assad’s direct and indirect support until they became a monster no one could control.”
None of that will make the slightest bit of difference to Tony Blair’s critics, to the critics of the Government of the day who took those decisions or, especially, to those on the hard left. The facts make no difference at all to those people, because they are implacably opposed to the UK or other western countries ever taking military action.

Thomas Tugendhat: I declare an interest in this report because I served in the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, and along with many colleagues from all parties in the House—some of whom are not here today—I was proud to serve my country  and to stand with many enormously honourable men and women who did their best in very difficult circumstances.
I will not fight over and again the battles being fought this afternoon about Tony Blair and his guilt or otherwise, because I would rather move forward and speak about the United Kingdom’s strategy and how on earth we got ourselves into a position that meant we were so clearly acting against our own national interests. We seem to have got into a position where the only answer was to be as close as possible to the United States, and to use force at a time when other options were available. The only answer seemed to be to follow the wishes of a Prime Minister who, although he sounded powerful at the time, was clearly too weak to invite challenge, even in his own private Cabinet. For me, those are the real worries—how could we have got to that stage? There are, of course, many reasons for that, and Chilcot lists them. Today, the question is how we get out of that.
The National Security Council, introduced by the previous Prime Minister, was an excellent invention, and I look forward to our current Prime Minister taking it forward, and introducing to the various Departments that contribute to the NSC the elements that feed into it. In my former Department—I mean that as an employee rather than as a Minister, although the Prime Minister may yet call; the evening is young—the Chiefs of Staff Committee established an impressive group by going back to an old idea.
In the period between the two wars, the Chiefs of Staff Committee invented a group constantly to challenge the Treasury, the Foreign Office, and other Departments, so that they could be prepared should the worst happen. That meant that, although those Departments were not as ready as we would have liked, at least in 1939 the 10-year rule that the Treasury had imposed was no longer in force, and we were re-arming and able to defend ourselves against Nazi aggression. That Committee was reformed in the Ministry of Defence under the former Chief of the Defence Staff, General Richards. That is great, but other Departments have done less well. I will not run through them, but it seems incumbent on those who have the authority to command embassies, aid work and armies, also to be responsible for ensuring that the strategies they prepare and advise Ministers to follow are right for the United Kingdom, and not just expedient for a quick relationship with the US.
I very much welcome what my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) said about the Truman doctrine. He is right, but the Truman doctrine should not be simply a reassertion of Westphalian principles. It must today be updated with the concept of the Responsibility to Protect that the UN has made so clear over the past few years. It is right that we avoid Iraq, but it is also right that we avoid Rwanda or Srebrenica. The great error of Iraq is that it did exactly the reverse of the right to protect: it put people in greater danger. This did not happen everywhere. The Kurdish communities were often better defended because they were armed. The reality, however, was the spread of insurgency and trouble. It is hard to argue that we improved the situation, although it is very difficult to know whether we made it worse.
As we move on from that period, it is incumbent on us to consider the legal aspect. We have been talking today about the legality of the war and holding the  leader in contempt, but I would like to look closely at how we hold soldiers to account. The spread of lawfare into combat zones has changed the nature of command dramatically in the past 50 to 60 years. The concept of combat immunity has been increasingly eroded. Young lieutenants and young corporals, junior leaders in the armed forces who took decisions at the age of 19, 20 or 21 in the heat of battle, are being tried today, five or 10 years later, in the cool of the courtroom. They are being tried by people who do not and cannot understand the pressures on them at that time and at that moment. They are being held to account in a way that is not only unfair but immoral. It is us here in this place who hold the responsibility for war, not the young men we send.

Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh: I will not be giving way.
The publication of the Chilcot report last week was a vindication for all those in Parliament and across the country who were vilified for opposing this terrible, unnecessary and ultimately failed war. It exposed the sorry tale of misleading statements that preceded the House’s decision to support military action, and put our servicemen and servicewomen in harm’s way. We cannot allow that to happen again.
When I began reading the Chilcot report last week, my first thoughts were with the families of those servicemen and servicewomen, and those who have been saddled with the physical and mental scars of that war. Families such as that of Lance Corporal Andrew Craw from Tullibody in my constituency, who died in Iraq on 7 January 2004. How must they have been feeling when they read the report? They now know that we entered into a failed war, as Chilcot said, without adequate support for our own troops or proper thought for the aftermath and the millions of people in Iraq. To see these families’ bravery and dignity, as they publicly responded to the report last week, was humbling and  inspiring. It is worthy of note that Blair’s team of spin doctors had 18 months to look at the sections of the report referring to him, whereas the families were given three hours. They must be reassured that Parliament takes its role seriously and acts truthfully at all times. They deserve no less.
The reports makes it clear that there was a complete absence of the Cabinet government essential to ensure the vital issue of national security. The evidence shows that Ministers around the Cabinet table did not effectively challenge the decision to take us to war or devote their energies to planning efficiently for the aftermath of the campaign of shock and awe at the outset of military operations. Most of all, it lays bare what took place in order that they might win the hearts and minds of the country and this House. As we have heard, Tony Blair said in his note to George Bush:
“I will be with you, whatever”—
whatever the facts, whatever the circumstances, whatever the consequences! What a damning indictment of a diminished figure!
As Tony Blair’s memos to President Bush demonstrate, he said one thing in this place and another behind closed doors. He stood here, in this place, and claimed that these acts were predicated on Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction, but confirmed in writing to President Bush in private that regime change was their goal. The right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) has articulated five falsehoods in the lead-up to the parliamentary decision in 2003 and in connection to the post-conflict plans. Paragraph 630 of the executive summary is indeed damning.
These actions have led to around 1 million Iraqi children under 18—about 5% of Iraqi children—losing one or both parents and resulted in 70% of children in Iraq suffering from trauma-related symptoms. This is not about binding the hands of Tony Blair’s successors but about showing that facts and evidence are central to everything we do. Lessons must be learned and the mistakes of the past must not be repeated. A modern Parliament needs a modern approach to transparency and accountability. If the public cannot trust what is said here, it places in peril our whole parliamentary system. Parliament must act now to protect its own integrity.
As I prepared for today’s debate, I reread the speech that my predecessor, Sir George Reid, made to the Scottish Parliament prior to war in 2003. He said:
“Above the doors of the Red Cross in Geneva, there is a phrase from Dostoevsky, which we should remember in time of war. It states that, in war,
‘Everyone is responsible to everyone for everything.’”
This House now has a responsibility to hold the former Prime Minister to account for his actions. This would be not a judicial process but a parliamentary one, for which there is precedent. This is our responsibility and we should rise to it.

Steve McCabe: I remember the events that we are discussing very well. They took place during my second Parliament as an MP,  and they were not really the sort of stuff that I thought I had come here for. I remember how seriously people in and around the House discussed the issues in the run-up to the vote. I recall intense debates with colleagues and friends both inside and outside Parliament and, of course, I recall friends coming to different conclusions. According to my recollection, no one treated the issue lightly, and I do not think there is anyone who does not regret the loss of life. However, as one of those who were here at the time, and as someone who voted for the war, I take the view that we must all take some of the responsibility. We must bear some collective responsibility.
The only Cabinet resignation that I recall was that of the late Robin Cook. All the others stood firm and stayed on board, so they had a collective responsibility as well. While I understand that some folk are desperate to pin all this on one man, it is hard to see how that stands up in those circumstances. Of course there are legitimate criticisms and lessons to be learnt, and I certainly accept the point about “sofa” versus Cabinet government, but Lord Turnbull actually said that he was talking about a style of government, and he also said in evidence that it was a “professional forum” and he was not talking about a bunch of advisers and cronies getting together. He was very clear about that, but it was not the impression that was given earlier.
Obviously one of the big lessons is about intelligence. I acknowledge that the Government have taken a significant step forward in that regard, but it is appalling to think that M16 knew that one of its principal sources of intelligence was a fraud, and chose not to share that with the Government before the vote. We should never let that sort of thing happen again. As for war planning and post-invasion planning, and what we have just heard about equipment, there are clear lessons to be learnt, but they are not just lessons for politicians. They are lessons for intelligence officers, for the Ministry of Defence, and for senior military figures.
Part of the purpose of the Chilcot report is to enable us all to learn lessons. The tragedy is that if it is reduced simply to an attempt to pin it all on one man, we will not learn many lessons. If, after 13 years, the best outcome is a contempt motion, where will we end up? Will we end up back here saying, “What about the late Baroness Thatcher? We have found out some more details about the Belgrano”—or the Gibraltar assassinations—“so let us table a motion on that”? Will we end up saying that the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr Cameron) should be hauled back because of some new revelation, or apparent revelation, about Libya? I do not think that that is what we should be trying to do.
I recognise that Tony Blair is a Marmite figure, but we did have a parliamentary vote to go to war. It was not all down to him. Nowhere in the report does Chilcot accuse him of misleading Parliament, and I really do not think that we should use this House to try to settle old scores or enmities. We should be better than that. We need to recognise the risk that will be posed in the future, when there are difficult choices to be made, if we get this wrong. Real political leadership is not about settling scores, scoring points or addressing rallies; it is about taking really tough and difficult decisions. We should be very careful in our response to Chilcot, because if we get this wrong, we could put ourselves in a  situation where the new Prime Minister, and any future Prime Minister, will be frightened to make a brave decision.
It is possible to make a brave choice and make the wrong choice, and we all know with the benefit of hindsight that there are elements of the Iraq situation that we would deal with differently, but if we turn this into a simple exercise of trying to pin the blame on one man in order to settle longstanding scores, we will do nothing to advance our ability to deal with difficult conflict situations in the future. This House needs to be bigger than that.

Brendan O'Hara: As my right hon. Friend the Member for Gordon (Alex Salmond) said earlier, Sir John Chilcot’s extensive report provides a comprehensive and detailed analysis of one of the most shameful and disgraceful failures of British foreign policy. Sir John quite rightly points a finger squarely at the former Prime Minister Tony Blair, who he says led the United Kingdom into a war in Iraq
“before the peaceful options for disarmament had been exhausted.”
There cannot be a more damning set of words than that among the 2.5 million words of Sir John’s report. Tony Blair stands accused that, while peace was still an option, he as the British Prime Minister chose war. And why? Because he had promised his friend George Bush that he would. The revelation of the memo saying
“I will be with you, whatever”
exposes Mr. Blair’s desire to help President Bush to achieve regime change in Iraq as the primary motivating force behind the invasion—an invasion, as we have heard oft times this afternoon, that cost the lives of 179 British service personnel and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians.
In his report, Sir John makes it clear that there were the makings of a dirty deal to pursue regime change in Iraq as far back as 2001. So from the very outset of this  calamitous misadventure, it appears that Tony Blair was more concerned with presentation, and with having and maintaining influence in the White House, than with doing what he should have been doing—that is, meticulously preparing and planning to ensure that UK service personnel would have the best equipment and the best possible intelligence ahead of an invasion. He singularly failed to do that, and today Tony Blair stands accused of overseeing a complete failure in military planning that left our armed forces vulnerable and with insufficient equipment, once the invasion was under way. Despite his knowing since December 2001 that war was an almost inevitable consequence of his deal with President Bush, there were still serious equipment shortfalls when war came in early 2003. Exactly one week before the invasion took place, it transpired that the new desert kit would not be ready in time, and our troops left for Iraq with insufficient body armour and ammunition. The shortfall of desert equipment amounted to 18,300 suits and 12,500 pairs of boots. That is absolutely shocking.
Even before a shot had been fired in Iraq, our service personnel had been badly let down by their Government’s abject failure to plan properly for a conflict they had long known was going to occur. Worse—much worse—was to come once the immediate invasion was over. The lack of a post-invasion strategy once Saddam Hussein’s army had been defeated meant that British troops were woefully unprepared to operate in a country that was descending into chaos and anarchy. That was to have disastrous consequences for many, including the soldiers of the Black Watch.
The Chilcot report reveals that on 21 October 2004 Tony Blair misled his own Cabinet on the risk of deploying the regiment to north Babil—an area known as the “triangle of death”. Cabinet minutes show that Blair told his Cabinet that
“the danger to which they”—
the Black Watch—
“would be exposed was not qualitatively different from that which they had experienced to date in their current tour.”
However, we now know that Mr Blair had received intelligence that very same day warning that north Babil would be
“more hostile to a UK presence than the population in Southern Iraq”
and that
“the presence of UK forces will attract insurgent attacks.”
Sir Kevin Tebbit, the then permanent under-secretary at the Ministry of Defence, had already warned that
“there would be a casualty issue”
for the Black Watch. How sadly prophetic those words were. On 5 November 2004, three Black Watch soldiers—Sergeant Stuart Gray, aged 31 from Dunfermline, Private Paul Lowe, aged 19 from Fife, and Private Scott McArdle, aged 22 from Glenrothes—were killed and eight of their colleagues injured.
It is abundantly clear from the report that there was absolutely no proper plan to win the war or to secure the peace. One of the report’s key findings is that although it appears that Mr Blair understood the importance of securing peace, he did not seek assurances from the US President and did not make such a plan a condition of our involvement. Sir John makes it clear  that as Iraq descended into absolute chaos neither DFID nor the Foreign Office was willing, prepared or equipped to accept responsibility for reconstruction. Had there been a plan, the future would have been markedly different. The humanitarian crisis we have seen since could have been avoided and a fertile recruiting ground for extremists would not have emerged from the chaos. It was the failure to plan that put the lives of many of our servicemen and women in such grave danger. The country remains a hotbed for extremism to this day. Lessons have to be learned from the shambles that was the Iraq war. People have to be called to account for their actions and we can never allow this to happen again.

Caroline Lucas: No one doubts that Saddam was a brutal tyrant, but few would now dispute that the Iraq invasion was the biggest foreign policy failure of recent times. The Chilcot report provides detailed confirmation that military intervention was by no means a last resort, that all other avenues were not exhausted, that Iraq posed no immediate threat to the UK and, crucially, that hindsight was not necessary to see those things.
There has been talk in the House that a contempt motion may come forward next week. If one does, I will support it, because I believe that Tony Blair was responsible for fixing evidence around a policy while telling us that he was doing the opposite. In so doing, he was treating his office, the Cabinet, this House and our constitutional checks and balances with disrespect amounting to contempt.
The hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe), who is no longer in his place, said that this process should not be about settling old scores, and I want to assure him that it is not; it is about Parliament doing its job properly. It is not about making a future Prime Minister afraid of taking difficult decisions; it is about ensuring that any future decisions are taken without misleading this House and with a full debate and Cabinet discussion. It is right to hold the former Prime Minister to account, but we must not lose sight of the fact that our political system allowed him to behave as he did. Chilcot reveals failures both systemic and parliamentary that allowed the former Prime Minister to act like a President.
Let me give just one example of those failures. Chilcot found that Parliament endorsed
“a decision to invade and occupy a sovereign nation”
without UN authority, and that it happened despite the fact that FCO legal advisers were clear in their view that the war was not legal. Lord Goldsmith, who as Attorney General constitutionally had the last word and had raised concerns in 2002, was, in Chilcot’s word, “prevented” from actively advising on the key UN resolution 1441. The Attorney General’s advice 11 days before the vote remained that it was not safe to say that the war was legal, yet a week later he had changed his mind, because the Prime Minister had assured him that Iraq had committed further “material breaches” of resolution 1441. Despite seven years of forensic investigation, Sir John Chilcot tells us that he cannot find the grounds that Tony Blair relied upon when he made that assurance. What is recorded is that Blair did not request, nor did he receive, considered advice on his view. That in itself is an appalling disregard for due process and must never  be allowed to happen again. We must amend our system so that the Attorney General is an independent legal expert and not a political appointee of the Prime Minister.
Let us also reflect on Parliament’s role. How did Members of Parliament come to vote for this terrible folly? We had a chronic and abject failure of the official Opposition. The Tories, with a few very honourable exceptions, simply abandoned the job. The job of opposition was left to the smaller parties and the 139 Labour Back Benchers who opposed the motion to go to war. Time and again we have heard in this House the defence that MPs voted for the war “in good faith”, but MPs are not elected to show good faith, they are elected to show good judgment, based on the evidence. One way to help to guard against this happening in the future would be to replace the royal prerogative on war with a new constitutional convention that includes the idea that votes on war are not subject to party whipping. If that had been the case, more Members might have engaged their own judgment rather than allowing themselves to be taken along on trust.
Although Chilcot does not judge the former Prime Minister’s guilt or innocence, he does bring out themes that I believe support a charge of contempt of Parliament. Let me focus on just one of those. Chilcot shows that a key example of the former Prime Minister fixing evidence around policy was a phone call with George Bush on 12 March 2003. In that call, Blair and Bush agreed to publicly pretend to continue to seek a second UN resolution, knowing that it would not happen, and then to blame France for preventing it. Chilcot reveals that Tony Blair then did two misleading things. He told his Cabinet the next day that work continued in the UN to obtain a second resolution and that the outcome remained open, even though that was not the case. He also went on to repeat a deliberate misrepresentation of the French position, both at Prime Minister’s questions on 12 March and in his key parliamentary statement on 18 March—he even included it in the war motion before the House.
In short, the French position was for more time for the weapons inspectors, but with war as an explicit possibility. The former Prime Minister kept taking out of context phrases from an interview by President Chirac given on 10 March, saying that they showed that France would veto a resolution in any circumstances. That was clearly not true, and Chilcot shows that it was not true. The French kept correcting Blair, but Blair instructed Jack Straw, in Chilcot’s words, to “concede nothing”. Clearly that was because he needed to continue the misrepresentation of France to provide cover for his failure to get UN support for the war.
Then we come to the gross misrepresentation of Iraq as a growing threat to the region and the country. Tony Blair said that Saddam’s weapons programme was “active, detailed and growing”, and that the intelligence showing that was extensive, detailed and authoritative. Yet the Joint Intelligence Committee had said just six months earlier:
“Intelligence on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction…and…missile programmes is sporadic and patchy.”
Even just two months before that, Jack Straw had written to Blair warning of “weak intelligence”, and the Butler report tells us that the intelligence between July  and September was “unproven”. Over and over again, Tony Blair misled this House, and it is our right to hold him to account.

Peter Grant: On Remembrance Day 2007 I attended a ceremony in Glenrothes that none of us ever thought we would have to attend: the unveiling of a war memorial in a town that did not exist at the end of the second world war. The memorial has two names on it—those of Private Marc Ferns, aged 21, and Private Scott McArdle, 22. They were let down by their country. They were sent into an illegal war that was not an act of last resort, and they were sent in without the equipment that they were entitled to have to protect them from enemy attack.
I believe that the Chilcot report establishes those facts beyond doubt. It does not bring those two soldiers back—nothing can bring them back—but Chilcot finally establishes facts that some wanted to keep hidden. It starts to give answers to the families. We need to decide on our response, and part of our early response should  be for this House of Commons to apologise for the dreadful error of judgment that our predecessors in this place made, which cost so many young lives.
There must also be a proper holding to account of those who were responsible, whose conduct has been brought into the full glare of the Chilcot report. It is not about one person; it is about 179 people. It is not about witch hunts or settling old scores, as was ridiculously suggested earlier. It is about applying the principle that nobody, but nobody, is above the law, and that if those in positions of responsibility betray that responsibility, there will be no hiding place from justice.
I do not have time to highlight the specific parts of the executive summary that I believe point unerringly to the conclusion that former Prime Minister Tony Blair deliberately and persistently misled his Cabinet, misled his Government, misled this House and misled the people of these islands, not about whether he believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, but about whether he cared that those weapons of mass destruction existed. He was never interested in a war to disarm; he was only ever interested in a war to achieve regime change. He was acting in support of the policies and interests of a foreign power, even when those were incompatible with the stated policies and objectives of Her Majesty’s Government.
It is not correct to talk about the previous Prime Minister committing war crimes, but there is an argument for saying he was in contempt of this House. However, his conduct, had it been carried out by a diplomat, would have led to a trial for treason. It is unthinkable that, simply because he was Prime Minister, he should somehow be immune from any further investigation. It is simply not good enough that he should be allowed to walk away with nothing more than a half-hearted apology and expression of regret.
Even the motion that the House of Commons approved on 18 March 2003 said nothing about regime change. Even at that point, the former Prime Minister was keeping up the pretence; he was arguing about weapons of mass destruction when what he was interested in was overthrowing the regime of Saddam Hussein. The only conclusion I can form is that Tony Blair’s actions were dishonest and misleading from the beginning. As a result, these islands went to a war they should never have taken part in.
Marc Ferns, Scott McArdle and 177 others went to that war and will never come home. We owe it to their memory—we owe it to their families—to make sure that those responsible have the case against them tested in a court of law.

Chris Law: I concur with my hon. Friend. In fact, £200 million has been invested in the rail link between Dundee and Aberdeen. To add to that, the recent link by air to Amsterdam has been wholly welcomed, and is a major boost for the Tay cities region.
Digital connectivity is of equal importance to physical connections. Businesses now look to locate where they can receive a broadband service with the highest possible speeds and capacity. Dundee and Perth are both planning to invest heavily in their fibre networks and in related smart city technologies. To take a small example, of the last three businesses that I have been involved in, from tourism to film and media, and latterly, financial services, all were hugely dependent on broadband.
A successful Tay cities deal will play a vital part in ensuring the fulfilment of the massive potential of the skilled workforce of the Tay cities region. It is not so long ago, when I was growing up in the 1980s in Dundee, that the UK Government appeared hellbent on destroying manufacturing. Dundee paid a very high price for that. Due to the destruction of jobs, industries and communities that took place in this period, Dundee still has a significant number of unemployed people or people in low-paid jobs. A similar pattern can be found in other towns and areas in the Tay cities region, and potential growth could be seriously held back by a lack of investment. In the Tay cities area, employment growth per year falls short of the Scottish average. Inequality is the single biggest challenge facing our region and, without a strategic approach, the gap between our wealthiest and poorest citizens will continue to grow.
However, the good news is that Dundee is now on the up. My city is a dynamic place and one of diversity, steeped in history, culture and industry. It boasts two universities, Dundee and Abertay; a fantastic art school,  the Duncan of Jordanstone; a further education college; and cultural landmarks such as the Dundee Repertory Theatre, the Gardyne Theatre and the Dundee Contemporary Arts centre. We have a world-renowned reputation for life sciences, and Ninewells is one of the largest teaching hospitals in Europe. My constituency is also an internationally renowned centre for video game development, which I have mentioned, and the birthplace of some of the biggest names in game history. Lastly, in 2014 we were recognised as the UK’s first UNESCO City of Design for our diverse contributions to the fields that I have mentioned.
This is all good, but Dundee is not resting on its laurels. We are in the midst of a £1 billion master plan to regenerate and reconnect the waterfront to the city centre. Of all the cities in the UK, Dundee was chosen to build the first Victoria and Albert Museum outside of London, which will open in 2018 and is expected to bring hundreds of thousands of new visitors each year to Dundee and the surrounding areas. The waterfront redevelopment has been a turning point for regeneration in Dundee, and a city deal would ensure that further progress is made in developing Dundee into a modern and important economic centre for Scotland. It is believed that the deal could have an impact on Dundee that is 10 times greater than the waterfront development currently under way.
The Scottish Government have a strong record of delivering for Dundee. We have received over £100 million through the cities growth fund, in conjunction with Scottish Enterprise, for our waterfront regeneration. As I mentioned, we are also set to benefit from a £200 million investment to improve rail links between Dundee and Aberdeen. In comparison, we have received £5 million so far from the UK Government. The Scottish Government are very supportive of city deals and have made it absolutely clear that they will work with any Scottish city considering a deal to make a strong, joint approach to the UK Government. I have touched on this already, but let us see a renewed commitment from the UK Government to seriously consider a more generous proportion of funding for the Tay cities deal.
It is not just Dundee that is seeking clarification on the city deal: North East Fife, the home of golf and of Scotland’s first seat of learning—the University of St Andrews, my alma mater, where I learned with great appreciation the history of my nation—seeks reassurances, as does the wider community. So too does the fair city of Perth—my hon. Friend the Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) is here tonight—where we find Scone Abbey, home of the Stone of Destiny where the king of the Scots was crowned. Last but not least, reassurance is needed for Angus, the birthplace of Scotland, where the signing of the declaration of Arbroath at Arbroath Abbey in 1320 marked Scotland’s establishment as an independent nation.

James Wharton: I congratulate the hon. Member for Dundee West (Chris Law) on his contribution. When we started I was a little concerned that we were talking about Brexit and the referendum. I was asked to discuss the Government’s support for Stirling, and I thought that we might have ventured into a debate on a different matter. Although I am in a minority in the House at the moment—I was very much a supporter of the referendum—I recognise the case that colleagues who have concerns may wish to raise, and their right to hold a different view. I also commend the hon. Gentleman on the way he has approached this debate, because he provided a lot of information to the House about the deal and why he believes it is important. When the Government take decisions, it is important to look across the piece—particularly for city deals, which are relatively competitive because most areas want to secure one—and ensure that that strong case is made. I commend him on his work this evening, and previously, in that endeavour.
In 2011 the UK Government created the city deals programme that sought to agree a series of bespoke, placed-based policy and funding deals with localities. In total, 26 English city deals were agreed between 2011 and 2014. Recognising the success of those deals, the Government have expanded that programme to other parts of the United Kingdom, working with the Government in Scotland and the devolved Administration in Wales. In 2014 the Glasgow and Clyde Valley city deal was agreed. That was followed by further city deals in Wales and the Cardiff capital region, in Scotland in Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire, and in Inverness and the Highlands in 2016. At the 2016 Budget, the Chancellor announced that the Government were opening city deal negotiations with Edinburgh and Swansea Bay, and hoped that those would be concluded positively.
UK city deals are driven at local level, and it is for local authorities and their partners to take the initiative in leading and proposing bids to the Scottish and the UK Governments. Where support from hon. Members is forthcoming, that is doubly welcome and effective in making the case, as the hon. Gentleman has done this evening. The Government are committed to ensuring that all parts of our country have the tools and support to grow their local economies. As such, Ministers in the Scotland Office are keen to engage with cities or regions that have proposals to improve economic performance, which includes four city deals.
City deals in Scotland are tripartite. They involve the UK Government, the Scottish Government, and the local area from which they are usually, and should expect to be, driven—I have already referred to the deals made since 2014. Building on the significant progress already made, both Governments have made it clear that they are receptive to the idea of a Tay city deal. However, in the first instance it is for those local leaders to come together and develop an ambitious and credible city deal proposal, and subsequently to put that to the UK and Scottish Governments.

James Wharton: That is indeed true and welcome, and the fact that that complete representation is here makes the case all the more powerfully. I want to send a positive message to those who wish to pursue this city deal. I want city deals to be delivered, and I believe they can help to grow local economies. Indeed, I have no doubt that those from the areas affected by such decisions know best how to drive economic growth and what is needed to unlock the undoubtedly significant potential, some of which the hon. Member for Dundee West has already alluded to. I want to find a way to unlock that growth, and to ensure that the UK Government play their part in doing that wherever possible.
On the deal we are here to discuss, I understand that my right hon. Friend Lord Dunlop met Dundee City Council and other potential business bid partners in Dundee on 16 May to discuss their ambitions. He also met leaders of Perth and Kinross Council, at a meeting of the Scottish Cities Alliance, in Inverness on 8 June. The Government are encouraged by the ambition and early thinking contained in the city deal overview local  leaders have shared. It is a relatively high-level proposal. There is still work to be done on it, but it is very welcome that it has come forward. It highlights opportunities around investment, innovation, inclusive growth and internationalisation. It highlights some of the things the hon. Gentleman has spoken about this evening: connectivity, the need for investment, and the opportunities that exist in that area to drive economic growth. They will benefit the UK as a whole, as well as the people living specifically in those communities.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland spoke with another bid partner, Dundee University, just last week. It is clear that partners are working hard and formulating ideas, but work still needs to be done. I recognise that the hon. Gentleman is seeking clarification and a commitment from the Government that we will continue with the process. I cannot put it any more clearly than this: I would like to see it successfully concluded. I would be happy—I know my colleagues in the Scotland Office would be enthusiastic, too—to work with hon. Members and local partners to see it delivered, if we can come up with the right proposal and the detail can be provided. If the figures stack up and the proposal works, it could be very good for the area the hon. Gentleman represents. Indeed, it would be good for the wider area represented in the House this evening and good for the UK.
The track record of city deals is a successful one. Significant local growth has been generated by listening to those who know what local economies need, and by recognising that different areas need different things and will want to focus on different priorities. They need support to do that effectively. The hon. Gentleman has made a very clear case. He and I have quite a different view on the UK’s membership of the EU, but we share a common interest in driving growth and empowering people to make the best of the wonderful opportunities that exist in the diverse country we are here to represent. I am very happy to give the hon. Gentleman assurances to that effect. I am very happy to continue, for as long as I am in this position, to support the city deals programme, and to work with him and his colleagues to deliver it.

James Wharton: I am not sure if that was a hint from the hon. Lady that I should be checking my phone and ensuring it is fully charged. I do not know what might follow.
This is a time of change and we have a new Prime Minister. There will be a new Chancellor, whoever that may be. The track record of city deals is that they have been shown to deliver growth and boost local economies. They have been welcomed across the House and across the political divide for those very reasons. I have no doubt that whoever is appointed Chancellor in due course will want to drive growth and empower communities to unlock the potential that undoubtedly exists in them. I cannot speak for whoever that might be more directly than that, but I can assure the hon. Lady that I share the broad sense of direction put before the House in the debate this evening.
We all want to see local people empowered to make the best of the communities in which they live. We all welcome agreement about how that can be done, particularly when it is cross-party. City deals have been a successful programme, one to which this Government have been firmly committed. I want to see the programme taken forward and more done with it. I am happy to join the hon. Lady, and any hon. Member, in making that case in due course, but I cannot go further than that, as I am sure she will appreciate, because my phone has not yet rung this evening.
I want to end on a positive note. The hon. Gentleman has made a strong case. My right hon. and hon. Friends in the Scotland Office will be keen to follow the debate that has taken place this evening. They are following this matter very closely. I hope the city deal can be delivered for the people he and his colleagues represent. I am convinced that in the future the city deals programme will be looked back on as something that helped to drive growth right across the United Kingdom.
Question put and agreed to.
House adjourned.